Author 



Title 



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16 — 47373-2 OPO 



Little Journeys in 
History and Literature 

By LILLIAN HOAG MONK 


























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Little Journeys in 
History and Literature 

By LILLIAN HOAG MONK, B.L. 







COPYRIGHT. 1919 

BY 

LILLIAN HOAG MONK 

»^ Los Angeles, California 



DEC 26 1919 



©CI.A559193 



/IvO 



TO 
of Los Angeles, California 

IN REMEMBRANCE OF ..^ 

THE MANY HAPPY YEARS WE HAVE 
SPENT TOGETHER 



A STUDY OF BROWNING 

"THE RING AND THE BOOK" 



The style of Browning, like that of Carlyle, as often conceals as reveals the 
author's thought. 

This fact deters many from giving Browning's poems the attention they 
deserve, a circumstance to be deplored, since Browning supplies so much of poetic 
suggestion that one cannot study him without being strengthened and enriched both 
intellectually and spiritually. 

Among the voluminous works of this poet that best merit and most richly 
reward close study is "The King and the Book," the plot of which is founded upon 
an account of a seventeenth century murder, as described in a little old book for 
sale in the market place at Florence, — 

"A book in shape, but, really, pure, crude, fact 

Secreted from man's life when hearts beat hard. 

And brains, high-blooded, ticked two centuries since.'* 

The bare facts, penetrated and illumined by the poet's imagination, take on 
life-like lineaments, and once more the dry bones live. 

"The versified narrative of the child Pompilia's marriage to Count Guido, of 
his cruelty and violence, of her rescue by a young priest, the lawful separation, the 
murder by Guido of the girl and her putative parents, the trial and condemnation of 
the murderer, and the affirmation of his sentence by the Pope, — all this is made to 
fill out a poem of twenty-one thousand lines." 

The first four chapters give the event in outline, and finely portray the thou- 
sand and one difi^erent opinions and versions which were rife in Rome concerning 
the circumstances of the tragedy and the participants' relative guilt or innocence. 

The character of Count Guido Franceschini is artistically drawn. Like the 
man in the play, he had blustered for prerogative and bellowed for freedom; he 
had served his religion and betrayed it; he had talked treason, writ treason, — but in 
vain. Every avenue of worldly success remained closed to him. A cool, calculating, 
black-souled villain and hypocrite, neither fearing God nor regarding man, he 
endeavored to cloak his deeds of darkness under a pretended zeal for Religion and 
the Law. From beginning to end his was a deep-laid scheme to rob and ruin 
Pietro, Violante, and Pompilia. 

The saying, that "the Devil can cite Scripture for his purpose," was forcibly 
illustrated in the reasons Count Guido urged for killing Pompilia. His idea of mar- 
riage alone showed the innate hardness and brutality of his nature, even if all other 
evidence had failed. In his defence, subtle and crafty as a fox, he admits facts when 
he cannot deny them, but twists them every way to suit his guilty purpose. In the 
eleventh chapter his real nature, jeering, scoffing, atheistic, yet, withal sharp and 
caustic, breaks out. His talk seems to be partly the legitimate outcome of his nature, 
partly a ruse, since Holy Church may hesitate to shove into eternity one who is in 
such a hopeless frame of mind. Taking him all in all, he is a blot upon existence. 
The only thing which entitles him to toleration is the excuse offered by Pompilia in 
his behalf. "So he was made; he nowise made himself." 

The sixth and seventh chapters are full of tragic beauty. The trifling mood 
which at first characterized the Canon Caponsacchi was not incompatible with his 
later earnestness and nobility of purpose. The first phase was but the caterpillar 
stage in his development. When the right moment came, he would prove neither deaf 
nor dumb to the call to a higher life. His was a right noble, manly character. 
Underlying the thin stratum of youthful levity lay an elevated nature, and the reve- 

[5] 



lation of goodness and purity as it was mirrored in Pompilia burnt up the dross in 
him, and he was bom again, not of the flesh, but of the spirit. He says: 

*'By the invasion I lay 'passive to, 
In rushed new things, the old were swept away; 
Alike abolished the imprisonment 
Of the outside air, the inside weight of the world 
That pulled me dovm . . . 
Into another state, under new rule, 
I knew m,yself was parsing swift and sure." 

Henceforth he was consecrated to noble service, — no more a squire of dames, but 
Christ's faithful soldier and servant unto his life's end. 

The strange and tragic circumstances of their brief acquaintance prevented 
anything like love, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, between Caponsacchi and 
Pompilia; but the feeling of the former for Franceschini's hapless victim had in it 
every element which, under different circumstances, might have blossomed into love, 
in the highest significance of that term. As it was, Caponsacchi's sentiments were 
more like those of Dante for Beatrice, or of St. Francis de Sales for Frances de 
Chantal, — an inspiration rather than an earthly passion. Little Pompilia's work on 
earth was done, but her brief, sorrowful life had been a lever to lift Caponsacchi 
from things terrestrial to things celestial. 

Mrs. Stowe truly says that love as it comes to noble natures is a sacrament, 
a religion. Whosoever is capable of such affections "feels within himself the root 
of all great and good actions, the reward of the heaviest sacrifices, a consolation in 
all trials." It is the highest proof a man can have in himself that he was born not 
a mere creature of the dust, but an immortal spirit. 

With all his heroism and spiritual greatness, in Caponsacchi's last words we 
hear the cry of the human. That last despairing exclamation, — 

"O great, just, good God! Miserable me!" 

shows how almost unconsciously to himself there is working in the man's heart a 
longing for human love and companionship, — the "might have been" which comes to 
so many when forever too late. 

A sweeter, nobler figure than Pompilia's cannot well be imagined. Among 
Browning's women, the child-wife stands pre-eminent, in her unexampled patience, 
under the sorest trials, and in her purity which had touched pitch without being 
defiled. Her poor little flower-like body stabbed through and through, she is Some- 
how, as if in answer to her prayer, permitted to live long enough to be a witness to 
the truth. Like many another, she had been put into this world — 

"To pray and fast. 
And learn what good is by its opposite" 

Though but a child, in years, she was old in sufi'ering, and in such a school 
people learn fast. Under the ceaseless torture, she blossomed into saintliness. 

Like Penthea in Ford's "Broken Heart," the pure womanly instincts of Pom- 
pilia taught her that without love marriage was but shame and sacrilege, and she 
sought escape from degradation; but the archbishop looked upon the Letter as all 
and the Spirit as nothing, and drove her back to her dungeon and her chains. The 
kind friar represents the class who see, hear, pity and lament but lack courage to 
help those that are ready to perish for fear of what may happen to themselves. 

Forsaken by all the world, Pompilia turned to One who is mighty to save. 

"Henceforth I looked to Ood only, 

Nor cared my desecrated soul 

Should have fair walls, gay windows for the world. 

Ood's glimmer that came through the ruin-top 

Was witness why all rights were quenched inside. 

Henceforth I a^ked God counsel, not mankind." 

She had long ceased to crave life for herself; but a new and deep instinct 
prompted her to live for the sake of another. At last a hand was reached out to 
her, for Caponsacchi dared to obey God rather than man. For the performance of 
the duty put upon him by his Master, he received the guerdon which an unbelieving 
world usually bestows upon its saints and heroes. 

[6] 



In touching words Pompilia vindicates the name and fame of the noble priest: 
"So that when I amn gone hut sorrow stays. 
And people need assurance in their doubt 
If Ood have yet a servant, man a friend. 
The weak a savior, and the vile a foe, — 
Let him he present, hy the namie invoked, 
Giuseppi-Maria Caponsacchi." 

Taught by experience how futile are all human plans and devices, she leaves 
her new-born babe im the hands of God. 

"Him, hy death, I give 

Outright to Ood without a further care, — 

But not to any parent in the world, — 

So to he safe. Why is it we repine? 

What guardianship were safer, could we choose? 

All human plans and projects come to ncmght. 

My life and what I know of other lives 

Prove that; no plan nor project! GOD shall care!'* 

Pompilia's feeling for Caponsacchi was certainly love, but love without a 
touch of earth. Those who really are one in soul cannot be separated. The world was 
passing away and the evils thereof, but Pompilia knew she had not lost Caponsacchi. 

"He was mine, he is mine, he will he mine. 

No pause in the leading and the light! 

He is still here, not outside with the world, 

. . . Ever with Caponsacchi! 

O lover of my life, O soldier saint, 

No work begun shall ever pause for death! 

Love will he helpful to me more and more 

In the coming course, the new path I must tread. 

He is ordained to call and I to come! 

Do not the dead wear flowers when dressed for God? 

Say, — / own. all in flowers from head to foot! 

Say, — Not one flower of all he said or did, 

Might seem to flit unnoticed, fade unknown. 

But dropped a seed, has grown a balsam tree 

Whereof the blossoming perfumes the place 

At this supreme of moments!" 

The hideous mockery of her marriage to Guido had disgusted her with the 
make-believes of this lower world, and she rejoices that in heaven there will be neither 
marrying nor giving in marriage. 

"Oh how right that is, how like Jesus Christ 

To say that! Marriage making for the earth! 

Be as the angels rather, who, apart. 

Know themselves into one; they are man and wife 

At once when the true time is. Here we have 

To wait not so long either! Could we by a wish 

Have what we vnll and get the future now, m 

Would we wish aught done undone in the past? 

So let him wait God's instant men call years; 

Meantime hold hard hy truth and his great soul. 

Do out the duty! Through such souls alone, 

God stooping shows sufficient of his Light 

For us i' the dark to rise by. And I rise." 

The Pope's monologue is one of the finest chapters in the book. His judgment 
of Guido and his wolfish family, of Pietro and Violante, of Canon Caponsacchi and 
Pompilia are strong and just. 

Heartsick at the corruption he sees on every side, perceiving the moral 
cowardice of even the sworn soldiers of Jesus Christ, who are ever ready to wage war 
over mint, anise, and cummin, while passing by the weightier matters of judgment 
and justice the Pope exclaims: 

[7] 



"Can it he this is end and outcome? 
And is this little all that was to be? 
Is the thing we see salvation?" 

An Elijah mood, which comes to everyone at times who sees evil apparently 
having everything its own way, forgetful that behind it all, 

"Standeth God within the shadow, 
Keeping watch above his own." 

But hope and faith are strong in the Pope, and he emerges triumphant from 
the sea of doubt. He reasons well on the use of sin and sorrow in the world, a prob- 
lem which many philosophers, the Stoics no less than Boehme and Leibnitz, have 
pondered, but which to the last generation as to the first remains an insoluble mys- 
tery. 

Browning inclines to the belief that nothing is made in vain, or will finally be 
destroyed. He speaks of that 

"Sad, obscure, sequestered state 

Where God unmakes but to remake the soul, 

He else made first in vain; which must not be." 

And Pompilia says of that most woeful man Guido: 

"We shall not meet in this ivorld nor the next, 
But where will God be absent? In his face 
Is light, but in His shadow healing too; 
Let Guido touch the shadow and be healed." 
Love is not treated by Browning in a superficial, conventional way. In his 
poems, as in the old Elizabethan drama, human nature displays itself unshackled 
by custom or tradition, though without the coarseness of the sixteenth century. 

With Byron love is a passion of the senses ; but in Browning it is "a passion 
of the soul, including and deepening the other." 

Browning is the Poet of Psychology. "He has opened," says Stedman, "a new 
field for the display of emotional power, — founding, so to speak, a sub-dramatic 
school of poetry, whose office is to follow the workings of the mind, to discover the 
impalpable elements of which human motives and passions are composed. The great- 
est forces are the most elusive, the unseen mightier than the seen; modern genius 
chooses to seek for the undercurrents of the soul rather than to depict acts and 
situations." 

In this arena. Browning reigns supreme. 



[8] 



A NOTABLE BLUE -STOCKING 



"The hand that hath made thee fair hath made thee good; * * * * and grace 
being the soul of thy complexion, shall keep the body of it ever fair." — Shakespeare. 

The effort which is now making in France to revive an interest in the older 
authors of that country has reached to the shores of the New World, and has resulted 
in the translation and republication of a series of short, pithy and entertaining mono- 
graphs by the best living French writers. Among them we are glad to find an account 
of the life of Madame de Sevigne, who held an honored place among the gifted 
women who played their parts on the stage of French society two or three centuries 
ago. 

Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marchioness of Sevigne, was born at Paris, February 
5th, 1626, and was descended from a noble Burgundian family. She was left an 
orphan at the age of seven years : but her good uncle, the Abbe de Coulanges, watched 
over her with fatherly care and solicitude. She received a very careful education, 
her tutors being Chapelain and Menage, two of the most scholarly men of their day. 
By them she was early guided into the pleasant fields of literature, and Virgil, Tasso, 
and Ariosto became her familiar friends and companions. She seems to have been an 
omniverous reader. Romance she enjoyed, but history was her special delight, and 
the truly liberal catholic spirit which characterized her through life enabled her to 
discover even in Turkish pashas many noble Christian virtues. 

At the age of eighteen Mademoiselle de Chantal was married to the Marquis de 
Sevigne, but the union proved a very unhappy one. 

"The what is always shining through the how," and the marquis could not long 
conceal his perverse nature under a semblance of gentleness and courtesy. Rude, 
faultfinding, churlish and profligate, he embittered the existence of his wife, and 
wasted her substance in riotous living. 

In 1651 he was killed in a duel, leaving Madame de Sevigne at twenty-five a 
widow with two children. Though she dropped some natural tears over the wreck of 
her married hopes, it was impossible to mourn very long or very deeply for such a 
want of man; and so completely did he seem to pass out of her remembrance that his 
name is never mentioned in the numerous letters she wrote to her children in after 
years. 

The gay, thoughtless girl had now developed into a wise and graceful woman, 
with a mind and heart deepened and elevated by study and experience, and when 
Madame de Sevigne re-appeared in society she was received with open arms by the 
brilliant coterie of men and women, who gathered around Madame de Rambouillet, 
nee Vivonne, a distinguished bas bleu. Since the days of Richelieu, the Hotel Ram- 
bouillet had been a rallying place for all the literary culture of the period, and the 
young Marchioness was considered one of the brightest ornaments of this intellectual 
circle. The old coterie had begun to scatter, but similar societies were formed, and 
everywhere her wit, her elegance, and her unaffected gayety of heart made her a gen- 
eral favorite. 

She must have been singularly attractive. Not handsome, but possessing that 
far higher charm, a beautiful behavior, a sunshiny, lovable nature, and a mind capa- 
ble of comprehending and appreciating all that is great and noble and heroic in 
thought and action. Whoever listened to her winning speech, or watched that ex- 
pressive countenance which mirrored every lofty emotion of the soul within, discovered 
in her a grace and beauty that age could not wither, nor custom stale. 

Though sought by the most eminent men of the age, Madame de Sevigne never 
married again. Whether deterred by her former experience, or whether the maternal 
instinct was so strong as to swallow up every other form of love, she declined all mat- 
rimonial offers, and devoted herself to the education of her son and daughter, to whom 
she was passionately attached. But, though proof against the tender passion, she was 

[9] 



not insensible to the charms of friendship, and the persons upon whom she bestowed 
her esteem and liking, found in her one of those ideal friends who are born for ad- 
versity. No vicissitude of fortune could shake her fidelity. The greater their misery, 
the closer she clung. An intimacy of forty years with Madame de Lafayette was 
never darkened by a single cloud. She also numbered La Rochefoucauld among her 
dearest friends. It makes amends for the cynicism and harshhess of his "Maxims" 
to learn that, in hLs private life, the duke was one of the kindliest and most amiable 
of men, though we marvel raiich how a fountain could have sent forth both sweet and 
bitter water. 

Through life Madame de Sevigne was remarkable for her frankness and sincer- 
ity, as well as for the sweetness of her nature. As the health of Madame de Lafay- 
ette, and of the duke of La Rochefoucauld declined, she visited them regularly, 
and we are told that her presence was like sunshine in those chambers where the 
shadow of death brooded. 

If hours of darkness and despondency ever came to her they were usually 
borne alone. It was the constant habit of her mind to look on the bright side of 
everything; and in the generous disposition which prompted her to judge her fellow 
creatures by their best, and not by their worst qualities, we find many traces of that 
noble character which "tliinketh no evil; which rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth 
in the truth." Graceless, indeed, must have been the person in whom Madame de 
Sevigne could see no good. No wonder that she so endeared herself to all who were 
able to appreciate her finely touched spirit, or that a friend who survived her should 
have written some time after her death, "My grief is ever fresh at seeing her no 
more." 

As a writer Madame de S'evigne's title to fame rests upon her letters, which 
are universally conceded to be a model of epistolary composition. "Amongst modern 
works," says Lord Macaulay, "I know only two perfect ones, to which there is no 
-exception to be taken, and they are Pascal's Provincials, and the letters of Madame 
de Sevigne." That we possess such a treasure is probably due to an event which was 
fraught with deepest grief to their author. When in 1669 Mademoiselle de Sevigne 
became the wife of the Count de Grigman, her home henceforth was in a distant 
province, and for twenty-five years the disconsolate mother found her greatest pleas- 
ure in writing long and frequent letters to thd idolized child whom she saw only at 
rare intervals. Into these epistles she poured all the fulness of her being. During the 
first half of the seventeenth century letter-writing had become almost a fine art. Many 
women had learned to write with ease and elegance, but Madame de S6vign^ surpassed 
them all in the liveliness of her imagination, and the keenness of her perception. Under 
her magic pen the most trite and commonplace subject straightway became Interest- 
ing; for she possessed in the highest degree the power of givmg life to whatever she 
chose to describe. 

Madame de Sevign6 belonged to that class of women Bulwer mentions, who 
have the temperament and tastes of genius without its creative power. "1 invent noth- 
ing," she said; but if it was not given her to body forth "the forms of things un- 
known," in portraying her own sentiments and emotions, and the life that went on 
around her, she was unrivaled. 

In an age when children were regarded with the utmost indifference, and were 
seldom permitted to grow up under the shelter of a father's roof, Madame de 
Sevigne's devotion to her children had been something exceptional; at the risk of 
seeming eccentric she bade defiance to conventional usage, and persisted not only in 
loving her own offspring, but also the little grand-children whom she occasionally saw. 
Knowing from her own experience what pure and perfect enjoyment lies in the com- 
panionship of books, she was very anxious that they should acquire a taste for read- 
ing. When informed that her grand-daughter Pauline gave promise of becoming a 
student, she was well pleased, and exclaimed, "What a pleasant, what a fortunate 
trait; she is beyond reach of tedium and idleness." 

Unlike many of her contemporaries, Madame de Sevign6 did not think it be- 
neath her dignity to look well to the ways of her household, and to keep a strict ac- 
count of expenses. But the fortune she had so carefully guarded was diminished by 
the extravagance of others. The Count de Grignan and his wife having improverished 
themselves by spendthrift habits like most of the French aristocracy, Madame de 
Sevigne broke the ties which had bound her to Paris for so many years, and retired to 

[10] 



the Chateau des Ro^chers in Brittany, that she mighit better retrench her own ex- 
penses and help those she loved. The change from Parisian life to the isolation of a 
Breton castle must have been very great ; but solitude had no terrors for her. She had 
too many resources within herself ever to become a miserable victim to ennui, the 
true oflFspring of spiritual emptiness. In communion with nature, and in the society 
of her favorite books she spent many peaceful hours. Though not a devotee, Madame 
de Sevigne was in all essential points a religious woman. From a letter written in 
the midst of sadness we know that her strong conviction of the existence of God, and 
her fixed belief that our lives are in His hand, had taught her to submit patientiy to 
the sorrows and disappointments which fell to her lot. 

Hers was a beautiful old age, as serene and bright as an October day; and we 
can easily believe that at three score years and ten she still seemed lovely and attrac- 
tive, as in the days of her youth. Through every chance and change of this mortal 
life she had cultivated those graces of mind and character which keep their possessor 
forever young and forever fair. 

While on a visit to Grignan castle, Madame de Sevign^ was attacked by small- 
pox, which terminated her existence. Though she had looked forward to death with 
many forebodings, when the time came this woman, so gentle and tender and pitiful 
towards all she loved, met the king of terrors with a cheerfulness and courage worthy 
of a philosopher and a Christian. On the 19th of April, 1696, she passed away, leav- 
ing behind her a work which will be a source of pleasure and profiit to the readers of 
many generations. 

*Godey's Lady's Book, April, 1889. 



[11] 



THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 



(Read before the Abigail Adams Chapter, Des Moines, Iowa, l^aughters of the 
American Revolution, August 3, 1894.) 



Every thoughtful student of history must sooner or later arrive at the fixed 
conviction that some divinity is at work in this world shaping the ends of national 
as well as of individual life. Nothing stands alone. Everything is related to what 
has gone before and to that which follows after. Out of disasters and tumults, out 
of wars and strivings flow beautiful and beneficient results. It may be chance, but 
when fraught with such divine; consequences to the world we must needs believe — 

Eternal God That Chance Did Guide 

Nowhere are the marks of such guidance more plainly visible than in the his- 
tory of our own land. 

English colonization in America occurred at a peculiarly auspicious period. 
Coming earlier it would have led to the establishment in the New World of political 
and religious ideas and institutions which were fast becoming obsolete. Under Queen 
Elizabeth, Englishmen had not yet attained to that activity of mind in politics which 
was reached under the guiding hand of Puritanism during the reign of her successors. 
When at last the hour came men of advanced views, of high purpose, and mighty 
will were standing ready to bear over land and sea the seeds of a nobler civilization 
and plant them in the virgin soil of this continent. 

Believing themselves to be the chosen seed of a great nation, from the outset 
everything had tended to foster and develop a spirit of liberty in the Colonists. Sep- 
arated by 3000 miles of ocean from the habits and traditions of the Old World, the 
domestic struggles of England left the Colonies untrammeled, and the love of free- 
dom and independence took deep root. 

The spirit of the early saints and heroes of America still lived on in their de- 
scendants, and in every crisis that arose during the reign of the later Stuart Kings 
men were not wanting to declare their steadfast determination to be buried in the 
graves of their fathers rather than relinquish one jot or one tittle of the inheritance 
so dearly bought. The nobler spirits of the time regarded it as a sacred duty to 
hand down unimpaired from sire to son this precious legacy through all succeeding 
generations. 

History, from 1608 to 1688, shows why we are a free people and the origin of 
our institutions. Henceforth we enter upon a wider theater and trace the causes 
of our becoming a united people. A world-wide struggle begins which will extend 
from New England to the Orient and exercise a determining influence on the for- 
tunes of mankind. 

The Seven Years' War, which broke out in Europe in 1754, was a turning point 
in the history of the world. The foundation of England's empire in India, the re- 
construction of Germany, and the United States of America resulted from this stu- 
pendous conflict. Hemmed in by a long chain of French forts and menaced con- 
stantly by hostile foreigners with their savage allies of the wilderness, the Colonists, 
indomitable as their love of liberty was, would scarcely have dreamed of breaEing 
the ties which bound them to the mother country had not the French been driven 
from the continent. This event paved the way for the creation of a future free and 
Independent political existence. 

A true colonial policy was but ill understood by the nations of Europe two cen- 
turies ago. The old Greek colonies were but loosely held, and, while always standing 
in friendly and filial relations to the parent state or city, they enjoyed from the 
earliest stages of their career an unquestioned right to life, liberty, and the pursuit 



of happiness. Not so with England and her transatlantic offspring. She regarded 
the American Colonies as. her exclusive property, to be harassed, hampered, rebuked, 
chastized and domineered over at her own good will and pleasure. The chief obstacle 
to such high-minded measures lay in the intrepid spirit of the freemen who held the 
outposts of civilization, and in the difl&culty of making her commands audible and 
effective across the leagues of water which separated her from her possessions. 

A German by birth and education, perhaps a more contemptible, short-sighted 
monarch than George III. never sat upon a throne. His idea of peace, like that of 
Louis XIV., meant simply a series of outrages on the powers around him. Patience 
and forbearance were regarded as signs of weakness and tokens that fresh injuries 
could be inflicted with impunity. The only limit was that of human endurance. He 
represented that ignoble type of mind which appreciates no other logic than that 
which is borne on the thunders of Sinai. His determination to play a part in Eng- 
lish politics was attended with remarkable results. Before twenty years had rolled 
around his harsh and arbitrary temper had driven the American Colonies to revolt 
and independence, and alienated from himself the love and loyalty of his home 
subjects. 

Like the ship money, whose payment John Hampden had so valiantly resisted, 
the tax on tea was trifling, but the principle was everything, for human freedom 
was the stake. 

Many of the noblest men in England sympathized with the Colonies and rejoiced 
that America had resisted. Great words spoken in the House of Commons by Burke, 
and Bar re, and Pitt, and Fox, were wafted across the sea to become household 
words in New England. Today there are towns in the United States bearing the 
names of these sturdy champions of freedom and justice. 

The causes which led to the outbreak of the Revolution are a more than twice- 
told tale. Sufficient to say that, having whipped the Colonies with rods, the King 
and his ministry were now preparing to whip them with scorpions. 

Every fiber of their hearts bound these peace-loving Colonists to the old home 
across the sea. Slowly, slowly, the spirit to dare and to resist took possession of 
them — the spirit which makes it easy for a true man to die, when to yield would be 
impossible. To them, as to other men of diverse lands and times under the hoof of 
oppression, 

There came a Voice without reply — 

" 'Tis man's perdition to be safe. 
When for the Truth he ought to die." 

True gentleness and lovableness of character by no means imply the possession 
of slave-like attributes. On the contrary, the great battles of justice and human 
freedom have usually been fought by men notable for their gentleness and love of 
peace. Out of quietness and harmony springs the sternest valor. The heart of every 
true American burns within him at the story of Otis and Warren and Adams, of 
Washington and Greene and Marion, not reckless adventurers or pot-house politicians, 
but men of far-seeing intelligence and high character, "heroes in heart and hand." 
With all our hearts we must needs admire the wisdom and fortitude and dauntless 
courage of these old patriots who lifted America to a place among the nations of the 
earth. 

Nor was this patriotic temper confined alone to the leaders of the movement. 
From every hill and valley of New England arose a great cry which awakened re- 
sponsive echoes among the mountains of Virginia and the savannas of Georgia. 
Widely separated by distance and race instincts, but now bound together by a com- 
mon interest and a common danger, men remembered only that they were Americans 
and rose up in arms like Clan Alpine at the command of Roderick Dhu. 

So unpopular was the war in England that, could the King have employed none 
but British troops, Bancroft affirms, the war by land against the Colonies must 
have been of short duration. To assist in subduing the freemen of the New World, 
George the Third hired large bodies of Hessians and German mercenaries, many of 
whom were allured by the prospects of free license to plunder in America, and 
indulge their basest passions. 

Great was the contempt expressed by the enemy for the humble Minute Men 
who were mustering to the defense of life and liberty, but the question as to whether 
America was peopled by men or cowards was forever set at rest as the red-coated 

ti3] 



British troops rolled ignominiously down the slope of Bunker Hill. In a nobler way 
it was answered still more decisively during the terrible winter at Valley Forge and 
the long eight years' struggle in cold and hunger and discouragement in which these 
fathers and sons of liberty fought a battle, not for themselves alone, but for the 
advancement and betterment of all mankind. 

When a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth's aching breast 

Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to west; 

And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels the soul within him climb 

To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime 

Of a century bursts full blossomed on the thorny stem of Time. 

The sound of the old Liberty Bell was heard around the world and ushered in 
a new era in the history of mankind. 

Every element which leads to revolution had long existed in France, and the 
successful uprising of America fired the train. The shock was like that of an earth- 
quake. Every throne in Europe rocked. Italy awoke from the torpor of ages, and 
before the movement ceased the revolutionary spirit had extended even to Mexico 
and the States of South America. Old things had passed away and all things were 
to become new. 

At the close of the Revolution this country was plundered and pillaged and with- 
out credit or currency, but the long struggle had been the "open sesame" to a great 
national life. Henceforth it was the destiny of America to work out on the grandest 
scale before the nations of the earth the problem of a government based on the con- 
sent of the governed — a "government by the people, through the people, for the 
people." 

In the divine economy there is no loss without some compensation. The inde- 
pendence of America, which seemed a fatal blow to England's greatness, was but a 
necessary stepping-stone to the establishment of the supremacy of the English race. 
"From that hour," writes the historian Green, "the life of the English people has 
flowed not in one current, but in two; and while the older has shown little signs of 
lessening, the younger has fast risen to a greatness which has changed the face of 
the world. It is already the main branch of the English people, and in the days 
that are at hand the main current of that people's history must run along the chan- 
nel not of the Thames or the Mersey, but of the Hudson and the Mississippi. But, 
distinct as these currents are, every year proves more clearly that in spirit tfie Eng- 
lish people is one; and in thus remaining one before half a century is over it will 
change the face of the world. What the issues of such a world-wide change may be 
not even the wildest dreamer would dare to prophesy. But one issue is inevitable. 
In the centuries that lie before us the primacy of the world will lie with the Eng- 
lish people. English institutions, English speech, English thought will become the 
main features of the political, the social, and the intellectual life of mankind." 

In waging their valiant fight for their own liberties, the Americans contributed 
much to renew and purify political life in England. In winning independence for 
themselves they also won a higher political standpoint for the mother country and 
for the whole world. 

Modern England has, in the main, governed her vast possessions with a wisdom 
and justice which merits the respect and admiration of mankind. 

The importance of the American Revolution can scarcely be overestimated. "The 
religious precedents and drift of the past," says Bascom, "had not been more sharply 
questioned nor its conclusions more broadly denied on general principles by the 
Protestant Reformation than were the opinions pertaining to society and government 
by the American Revolution. This Revolution, while favored by circumstances, had 
not been their blind result. It had not been made ready by mere physical forces; 
with these there had been a steady ripening of opinions, a practical use and theoretical 
proclamation of the principles of political freedom. This Revolution was not al- 
lowed, therefore, to transpire in the dark, its underlying truths obscured by the tur- 
moil of conflict or lost sight of in the interests of the hour. It was ripened by con- 
victions and accompanied by the clearest announcement of its justifying rea'sons. Its 
social bearings were thus much more important than its immediate political ones. 
Though it was the starting point of a great nation, it helped to set in motion and 
gave a permanent, unmistakable form to social truths which overlap all national 
bounds and carry discussion and commotion everywhere." 

[U] 



The chief influence of America upon Europe must ever be a moral one. Its 
commercial relations are the least important. Its peculiar institutions are an exam- 
ple to the nations. In the opinion of eminent observers these "are something more 
than an experiment, for they are believed to disclose and display the type of institu- 
tions toward which, as by a law of fate, the rest of civilized mankind are forced to 
move, some with swifter, other with slower, but all with unresting, feet." 

The beginnings of our history cannot be studied too long or too well. We shall 
search in vain the annals of other nations for higher examples of patriotism and 
lofty purpose, for more generous and heroic deeds. Not in vastness of territory or 
in the power which springs from material wealth does a country find its strongest 
bulwark, but in the souls of the men who inhabit it. Prom the characters and pre- 
cepts of the fathers spring the wisdom and valor of the sons, and by reverent con- 
templation of the immortal dead who have passed onward each succeeding genera- 
tion is uplifted and inspired. 

Centuries ago the great Pericles, in an oration over the hero dead who had fallen 
while defending the liberties of Greece, urged in eloquent words why men should do 
honor to the memory of the dead. It was not that they — secure in their immortality 
— needed temple or column to perpetuate their fame or reward their virtues, but be- 
cause through admiration of what is heroic men rise to higher levels. All their 
thoughts and actions are colored by such fine companionship. "No wreath is given and 
no monument reared by a nation to the memory of its illustrious dead but it blos- 
soms with good for the living through all future time. Virtue is encouraged, pa- 
triotism kindled, and all that is noble in our nature inspired to action by this homage 
to the greatness and goodness of our race." 

Nor is this greatness and goodness the exclusive possession of the Revolutionary 
fathers. The background of American history is filled with a noble company of 
gracious and reverend figures. Though in most instances debarred by their sex 
from winning laurels in battle or on tented fields, the mothers of the Republic were 
in nowise unworthy to be the companions and helpmates of heroes and patriots. 
When war's alarum sounded they uncomplainingly took upon themselves the burden of 
home and family, and, like the Spartan matron of old, sent forth their husbands 
and sons to battle, bidding them return with their shields or upon them. No yoke 
was too heavy, no sacrifice too great when borne in the cause they loved. 

Would we know of what metal our foremothers were made we must search the 
pages written by that iron-handed warrior, John Adams, and the records of Mercy 
Warren. 

Many of the choicest blessings of human life were won for us through the 
courage and constancy of these old Revolutionary sires and dames, and it well be- 
cometh posterity to clear away the dust of time from their memories and to pay 
due tribute to their lives and works. 



tl5j 



A VISIT TO CLOUDLAND 



Amokg the San Bernardino Mountains 



Since coming to California nothing has afforded me greater pleasure than a 
visit to the San Bernardino Mountains, ten miles from Redlands, where the power 
house of the Edison Electric Company is situated, which generates the electricity 
that lights Los Angeles, Riverside, Redlands and other places. The power house 
was very interesting and, of course, entirely new to me, but the devices of man are 
as nothing compared with Nature's works, and most of our time was spent explor- 
ing these mountain fastnesses. Very fortunate was I to have in my hostess a guide 
almost as much at home in Nature's haunts as Deerslayer himself, and so quick- 
witted and resourceful in every emergency as to remind me of those heroic and 
capable dames of the olden times, our honored foremothers, of whom wei have 
heard so much in song and story. 

Attired in khaki divided skirts, with long leggings, and whatever else my friend 
deemed suitable for the occasion, and mounted on sure-footed little burros, we 
started on 

A JAUNT TO COTTAGE CANYON 

several miles distant. Part of the way lay along the winding mountain road with 
a little stream babbling beside it, but the last half of the distance was over hills 
and hollows so steep and full of stones both small and great, that but for the 
trained sagacity of my companion and the ever faithful burro I should speedily 
have been reduced to the plight of Jack and Jill on their unlucky quest for water. 
But they were unerring guides, and we were rewarded at last by reaching Cottage 
Canyon, a spot as lovely and lonely as in the first dawn of Creation. A beautiful 
little waterfall throwing its white spray in the air, came tumbling down a wall of 
rock which was covered its whole length with green moss, like velvet. The water 
fell into a little brook which wandered on until it united with Mill Creek on its 
way to the ocean. After admiring this lovely scene a long time, we reluctantly 
started homeward, calling on the way at a wild cat's house, but indulged in no 
great regrets at finding its owner not "at home" to callers that afternoon. Tired 
and hungry, we reached home in time for dinner, with several horseshoes picked up 
for good luck and as relics of our delightful outing. 

UP AND UP TO FOREST HOME 

But the real joy was yet to come! Ten miles away was Forest Home, a sum- 
mer resort perched high up among the mountains like an eagle's nest. Owing to a 
recent cloudburst, the stage coach which plies all summer back and forth to Red- 
lands had ceased running. The only way to make the trip was for me to ride on a 
load of baled hay while my hostess rode a pony. But "Excelsior" was our motto, 
and the next day, before the sun was fairly up, we started. It was a morning in 
late October with enough chill in, the air to remind us of old times in the East, but 
very diflFerent was the scene which met our eyes. After crossing a tree-shaded 
mountain stream we came to a place where a great spur of mountain jutted out 
close to the road. Then for miles the narrow rocky road wound in and out at the 
foot of the mountains with all sorts of unexpected turns through what, at a little 
distance, looked like solid rock, and hard by on the other side we heard the gurgling 
and dashing of the beautiful brook, cold and pure and clear as crystal. Sometimes 
it ran smoothly over its pebbly bed, then broke into little cascades and waterfalls 
as rocks and stones disturbed the even tenor of its way. It made me think of 
what I had read about the mountain streams of New England and often wished 
to see. 

For five miles we drove over the roughest road I ever saw, and at times I 
found myself clutching frantically at the tall boots of the driver as being the only 

[16] 



object within reach not likely to shake off or fall out. Then, to our regret, we 
could go no farther, the road from there on being evidently in a state impassable 
to womankind. So we were left for the day, with our toothsome luncheon, in a 
fine old apple orchard lying low in a canyon between the mountains. I never saw 
such great apple trees, and here and there a live oak from which hung large masses 
of mistletoe. We feasted on the apples and also on the beauty around us. There 
had been a flurry of snow a few days previous and the mountain sides were flecked 
with it. High above all towered Old Baldy and Mt. San Bernardino, snow-covered 
and glorious to behold, while in this little happy valley all was green grass and 
warmth and sunshine. It was an ideal October day, and in the air was that in- 
definable softness and brightness which marks the dying year. It brought to mind 
the poet's lines: 

"Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright," 
But this was the golden wedding of the Earth and Sky rather than the June bridal, 
and more touchingly beautiful since in it the promise of spring was all fulfilled. 

By and by we wandered down the rocky road to the beautiful stream winding 
its sweet way among the trees, which in another place completely shut it in 
from view, but we went down to the edge and across. On the farther side there 
was a steep bank with small trees gracefully overhanging the water, but hollowed 
out in one place to form a lovely secluded dell. A mass of rock in the middle of 
the stream sent the water foaming and flying around it. No canvas of Ruvsdael 
ever equalled the beauty of this silent place in the very heart of Nature. The 
silent places! How much they mean to me since I have learned to know and love 
their beauty! Late in the afternoon our driver appeared and the return trip was 
made on a load of logs, softened somewhat by a pillow and comforter which my 
kind hostess had thoughtfully provided. All along the way were giant sycamores 
growing in all manner of strange shapes, and the mountain sides were thickly cov- 
ered with a growth of shrub oak, pine, firs and other trees. We saw much holly, 
but it was not like the English holly, though very pretty. 

One never tires of watching these everlasting hills in all their varying aspects, 
sometimes so stern and dark and lowering, then bright with sunshine and the loveliest 
purple haze. I love it all, the mountain gloom and the mountain glory! 

But the pleasantest experience must end, and my visit was brought to a fitting 
conclusion by a delightful ten-mile drive to ReoTands, where I took the train for 
Los Angeles, and reached home that evening well pleased with my little journey 
into Cloudland. 



[in 



OUR UNSEEN FRIENDS 



The poet Whittier somewhere speaks of the dreariness of life without an 
atmosphere. So much there is that is petty and wearisome in the details of our daily 
lot, so much to subdue even the most finely tempered spirit to the stuff it works in, 
that every life needs some higher realm of thought and imagination from which to 
draw inspiration for finer and better living. The noble thoughts and ideals which 
float to us through the medium of books, open as it were a new heaven and a new 
earth. It is strange how dear the printed page may become. Across the gulf of cen- 
turies spirit touches spirit and, as Emerson says, we become conscious of a closer 
sympathy with Zeno or Epictetus than with persons in the house. Truly used, books 
may become our friends, our companions, our counsellors, in all the issues of life. 

John Ruskin tells us with what persons in past history he had most sympathy, 
and by whom his life was most deeply influenced. Of these spiritual helpers he men- 
tions three that shone like fixed stars through all his earthly wanderings. 

In my own life the persons of the past to whom I have been most indebted, were 
first and foremost, Elder Brewster of the Mayflower, and that great sort of the Puri- 
tans, Henry Ward Beecher. From my youth, the life-story of Elder Brewster, fine- 
souled and wise-hearted, has been to me an uplifting influence, bracing by his heroic 
character and example the hands that hang down and the feeble knees. The inspiring 
sermons of Henry Ward Beecher coming by chance at a critical period of my history 
— I love to think "Eternal God that chance did guide"— were literally a lamp unto 
my feet and a light unto my path. His great doctrine of Education by Trial was a 
rod and a staff through troubled years when life was a gordian knot impossible to 
untie and which must not be cut. Acquaintance Mdth Mr. Beecher's noble teachings was 
a turning point in my mental and spiritual existence. In that great multitude which 
will rise up and call him blessed in the hereafter, T hope to find a place. In the words 
of Ruskin: "In all that is strongest and deepest in me, that fits me for my work, and 
gives light or shadow to my being," these two consecrated spirits have been my friends 
and helpers above all others, answering needs none the less keen and imperative be- 
cause hidden and voiceless. 

Next to these, I owe a debt of gratitude to Ralph Waldo Emerson, the guide of 
all who would walk in the spirit. Through a lonely youth, bereft of much that a young 
heart craves, his words were potent for untold good — 

"The tidal wave of deeper souls, 
Into our inmost being rolls, 
And lifts us unawares, 
Out of alt meaner cares.*' 

With words that are like a benediction, he braces the soul to endure hardness 
like a good soldier, until Time the Healer and Consoler makes apparent to us that "It 
is only the finite that has wrought and suffered; the infinite lies stretched in smil- 
ing repose." With what power does the seer of Concord bring home to one's conscious- 
ness the presence of the Over-Soul! ''How dear, how soothing to the heart of man is 
the thought of God peopling the lonely place, and effacing the scars of our mistakes 
and disappointments." These beautiful expressions of a beautiful soul are in strict 
accord with the divine assurance, that when we awake in His image we shall be satis- 
fied. We know not now, but we shall know hereafter. 

It is impossible to overestimate the influence of the Bible and of Shakespeare 
upon human thought, the one so rich in worldly wisdom and keen analysis of charac- 
ter, the other abounding in chapters and verses which, in life's crucial moments come 

[18] 



to the tempest-tossed spirit like a voice from heaven. These, also, have been among 
my life teachers. Nor must I pass unnoticed Tennyson's In Memoriam, Browning's 
Rabbi Ben Ezra, and Whittier's At Last, shining like a star from Beyond the Gates. 
More than anything else in literature these three poems express my inmost feeling 
concerning the life which is to come, as well as the life that now is. 

*In my constant natural temper and thoughts of things and of people," Harriet 
Beecher Stowe has been from early childhood very near and dear to my heart. When 
scarcely seven years old, the story of Dred was my daily delight. Those two old 
black-covered volumes were a mine of happiness. What mattered it that I could not 
pronounce half the words, and that much of the subject was far beyond my ken, when 
Nina's charm and Old Tiff's selfless devotion were sinking into my soul, and I was 
dwelling in an ideal world of fact and fancy. Mrs. Stowe has been doubly dear to 
my maturer years, representing as she does the spirit of early New England with its 
high ideals and purposes, and from which my parents were descended along many 
lines of New England ancestry. Untinged by narrowness ot* intolerance, she was the 
living exponent of the New England conscience. The Minister's Wooing, Poganuc 
People, and the ever-dear Oldtown Folks created anew for me the land of my fore- 
fathers. I felt that I had lived those books in some previous state of existence, an 
impression which was deepened in later years by roaming through the beautiful places 
of South Natick, the scene of Oldtown Folks and of the apostolic labors of John 
Eliot. Many friends and helpers have I known among historic characters and the 
world's great authors, but none more beloved than these I have mentioned, whose 
names are indelibly written in my book of life. Until death I shall wear them in my 
heart of hearts. 

Nor is this holy rosary complete without the gracious lady of Lynover, whose 
simple, beautiful stories of household life did so much fifty years ago to lift up our 
hearts. John Halifax, Gentleman, and A Brave Lady, have a place, all their own in 
the memory of men and women now traveling towards the sunset. 

Others there were who helped to give my life its true bias. Full well I recall 
the golden days when I first made the acquaintance of Evangeline, of J. G. Holland's 
Kathrina, and of Mary Clemmer's beautiful Memorial of Alice and Phoebe Gary, each 
of them a revelation of the noblest womanhood. My heart burned within me as I 
read, and scarcely more than a child in years, I felt as if a new heaven and a new 
earth had been unrolled before my reverent and wondering eyes. Then the sun was 
just above the horizon, and now it is dipping low in the West, but those early visions 
of truth and beauty have never lost their power — visions yet to be realized when the 
mortal shall have put on immortality, and death has been swallowed up of life. 



L19] 



THE BEAUTY OF COMMON THINGS 



Poets are the natural teachers of mankind. Poetry, truly understood, is not the 
pastime of an idle hour, but the voice of the divine in man, releasing him in inspired 
moments from the dominion of time and sense, and lifting him forever above a purely 
animal existence. Each succeeding generation, weary of the dust and smoke of this 
work-a-day world, turns for help and refreshment to these living springs of truth and 
beauty. It is through the ever increasing perception of the beauty, the infinite sweet- 
ness and pathos which encompass the commonest conditions of our lives that the soul 
continually renews its strength, and is borne as on eagle's wings above the regions of 
death and decay. 

Burns and Wordsworth may with truth be termed the priests and interpreters 
of common things. The charm and nobleness of lowly lives, the joys and sorrows of 
our dumb brethren, the daisy, the sighing of the wind through leafless branches, all 
found sympathy and interpretation in these great and gentle poets. 

Burns did not seek his themes in the realms of pure idealism or cold philosophy, 
but was content to voice the tenderest emotions of the heart, and to describe nature 
tenderly and reverently. His lyrics are as natural as the notes of the lark. "Highland 
Mary" is one of the most beautiful monuments ever reared to the memory of woman. 
How tenderly does the poet sing of that sweet woman, his one tfue love, whose image 
lives like a flower in his heart! 

O pale, pale now, those rosy lips, 

I aft hae kiss'd sae fondly I 
And closed for aye the sparkling glance, 

That dwelt on me sae kindly! 
And mouldering noio in silent dust. 

That heart that lo*ed me dearly! 
But still within my bosom's core 

Shall live my Highland Mary. 

"Afton Water" also immortalized the loved and lost; and that quaint old song, 
"John Anderson, my jo, John," will while literature endures be deservedly dear to 
all lovers, whether old or young, for to the one it comes as a prophecy and to the 
other as a fulfillment. 

In Wordsworth is realized Emerson's conception of an inspired thinker to whom 
all days are holy, all events sacred, all men divine. In the trival and temporal he dis-* 
Cerned the spiritual and eternal. "The meanest flower that blows" was sufficient to 
inspire thoughts "too deep for tears." In high thoughts and imaginings, and in con- 
stant communion with nature, he found the true preservative; these, joined to lovely 
dispositions and serene, beautiful friendships, lend to the evening of life a radiance 
like that of the setting sun: 

Thy thoughts and feelings shall not die. 
Nor leave thee, when gray hairs are nigh, 

A Tuelancholy slave; 
But an old age serene and bright, 
And lovely as a Lapland night. 

Shall lead thee to thy grave. 

Perhaps no other poets have done more to "inform the mind with quietness and 
beauty," and 

To give us eyes, to give us ears. 
And humhle cares and delicate fears; 
A heart, the fountain of sweet tears; 
And love and thought, and )oy;—^ 

in a word, to stimulate an ardent love of the simple and the beautiful in nature and 
in lifCi ' i J 

C20] 



SYMPATHY 

The men and women of literature often seem nearer to us than the people we 
meet in the street; probably because in the latter the real self is hidden, while in the 
former the secret springs of being are laid open to our view. In that great future, 
where we shall know even as we also are known, perhaps our sympathies will be 
quickened, not diminished, by that dread revealing. In the dust and smoke of this 
dim earth it would not do, for to see truly and judge justly we shall need all the 
light of the eternal morning. 

IMMORTALITY 

It is sweet to feel that our higher thoughts and affections cannot perish. They 
are a pos-session forever. It is only the scaffoldings of Time, the frail, the earthy, 
the mortal, which fall at the grave. All those elements which have conspired to lift 
us above the level of the dust and the worm will journey with us into another state 
of existence. If we live, they shall live also. O, there are words and tones and looks 
v/hich are stamped so indelibly upon our souls that, when all things else grow dim 
and fade away, these will arise, radiant as stars, on our spiritual horizon, and travel 
with us into Eternity ! 

NATURE 

The everlasting hills, the primeval woods, and the restless, moaning ocean ap- 
peal to all that is deepest and best in our natures. They are poetry and music in an- 
other form. 

THE RELATION OF KNOWLEDGE TO LIFE 

To live among books in the world of thought and imagination is a desirable 
thing. Years so spent are never to be regretted; but, unless the desire to absorb 
yields at length to the instinct to give out, even the life of study may degenerate into 
narrowness and selfishness. No man has a right to live and die wholly to himself. By 
slow degrees and in his own way every true scholar comes at last to perceive that 
that which enriches his own life without helping others is almost valueless. 

This truth is finely exemplified in Goethe's "Faust" and Browning's "Para- 
celsus." Each sought power and knowledge as the chief end of man, and each failed 
of the highest success by not perceiving that the true aim of all knowledge and all 
wisdom is but to make a human being more helpful, more serviceable to his kind. Un- 
sanctified by that motive, it is but sounding brass or tinkling cymbal. 

The kingdoms of the world and the glory of them could not afford Faust one 
moment of unalloyed happiness. Only when he forgot self and began to work for 
others could he say to the passing moment, 

"Linger a while, so fair thou art!" 
Broken by years and disappointments, Paracelsus, proud no more, learns, too, 
that knowledge without love is mere vanity — a veritable apple of Sodom, fair with- 
out, dust and ashes to the taste, — 

"With much power, always much more love." 

He no longer disdains the feeble efforts of his fellows, but sees in their humblest 
striving a sublime reaching out of the spirit toward something nobler than it pos- 
sesses, and which will become fruit and flowers in a world where "the inadequate to 
fulness groweth." 

Paracelsus ceases to hold himself aloof from his kind, and craves to lie 

"Within some narrow grave, 
Not by itself — for that would be too proud — 
But where such graves are thickest/' 

desiring nothing which shall mark him out from the roll of common men. Content 
to be but a man like other men, and touched with a feeling of their infirmities, his 
humility proclaims him truly great. His early aspirations are fulfilled, not in his 
way, but in God's way, and he has learned that God's way is best. His transcendent 
gifts of intellect are sanctified at last by love for his fellow creatures. 

The same high truth concerning the office and functions of knowledge is also 
impressively and beautifully taught in Shelley's "Alastor" and in Tennyson's "Palace 
of Art." All demonstrate that, as Emerson says, it is not what talents a man pos- 
sesses, but what he is to his talents, which constitutes character, and decides whe- 
ther he shall be a bane or a cup of strength inspiring and uplifting his fellow-men. 

[21] 



EDUCATION 

Next to a fine character, the acquisition of knowledge is the best thing in the 
world. To grow old, like Solon, in the pursuit of learning is certainly one of the 
most satisfying pleasures of existence. 

Considered in its finest relations to human life, education has failed to do its 
perfect work unless it has brought the young impressible mind into living contact 
with the great masters of the poetic and the ideal. "Blessed are they," says 
Matthew Arnold, "who have heard such voices in their youth; they are a possession 
forever." By such fine companionship hard, prosaic natures are softened and refined, 
while delicate souls are inspired with the courage which struggles and fulfills. 

Some one has justly said that genuine education and culture mean increased 
sweetness, increased light, increased life, increased sympathy, — in a word, the up- 
lifting and upbuilding of the entire man. The finest satisfactions this world can 
offer belong to him who is at once intellectual and spiritually minded. 

To know, to grow, to carry safely down through all the days of our years the 
heart's best and freshest impulses and join them to the maturity of age is the end 
of all true education, and the real preservative of human life. 

THE ADVANTAGES OF POVERTY 

A good bank account is something which many seek and few find. At the 
entrance to active life the majority of human beings are confronted with the ques- 
tion, "What shall we eat, and what shall we drink, and wherewithal shall we be 
clothed?" Of such moment is this that Herbert Spencer justly scoff's at any system 
of education which does not primarily teach self-support and self-reliance. 

On the first view, this seems a sordid matter, almost a misfortune that so much 
time and strength should be expended to procure things that perish in the using; but, 
looked into deeper, we come to perceive that not in harshness but in kindness it was 
ordained that man should eat his bread in the sweat of his brow. 

It is an actual loss to any human being not to know at some time in his life the 
pressure of poverty. What industry and economy, what energy, what skill in making 
much out of little, what inventiveness and ingenuity are called into exercise by this 
stern taskmaster! What sympathy, too, with the struggles and suff'erings of our 
fellow-creatures is engendered ! By what different standards do we come to measure 
all things in heaven and earth! 

Extreme poverty with its limitations may be unfavorable to the finest develop- 
ment, but not perhaps more so than wealth, which too often weakens and enervates 
and cuts the sinews of human endeavor. It is said that Hannibal's soldiers manfully 
overcame all the hardships and perils incident to the passage of the Alps, only to fall 
vanquished and undone before the pleasures and luxury of Capua. 

Perhaps the highest lesson poverty teaches is how to create, in spite of ham- 
pering disadvantages, a home that children can look back to with love and reverence 
and feel that from that humble spot have flowed to them the best influences and 
aspirations of their lives. 

SPIRITUAL EVOLUTION 

"He rates me as the merchant does the wares 
He will not purchase — 'quality not high! 
'Twill lose its color opened to the sun, . 
Has no aroma, and, in fine, is naught — 
I barter not for such comm,odities — 
There is no ratio betwixt sand and gems,' 
'Tis wicked judgment! for the soul can grow. 
As embryos, that live and move but blindly. 
Burst from the dark, emerge, regenerate. 
And lead a life of vision and of choice." 

Consideration like an angel came. 

And whipped the offending Adam out of him; 

Leaving his body as a paradise 

To envelop and contain celestial spirits." 

— Shakespeare: Henry Vi 

[22] 



"Undine," by La Molte Fouque, is a beautiful story and deservedly dear to 
Successive generations of readers. It is the symbol of a soul's quickening and sub- 
sequent development. What a change from the gay, light-hearted creature, without a 
care in the world or a serious thought, to the loving, suffering, soul-endowed woman ! 
Yet this is a metamorphosis which sometimes takes place in a human soul in real 
life. Born into existence with the Allegro temperament, — 

"Mirth, with thee I mean to live/' 

but changed by the sad experiences and vicissitudes of life into the Penseroso mind 
with all its high thought and feelings and imaginings. 

This wonderful transformation in human character is finely depicted by 
George Eliot in "Daniel Deronda." A world-wide gulf separates the selfish, reckless 
girl at the gaming table from the Gwendolen Harleth who, with shattered hopes and 
aching heart, resolves to become a woman "who shall make others glad that she has 
lived." Through remorse and the life-giving influence of a noble nature she was 
born again into another and higher state of existence. 

Hawthorne, in the "Marble Faun," shadows forth the process of a soul's evolu- 
tion from a lower to a higher state. What a difference between the Donatelio with 
whom the story opens and the Donatelio with whom it ends! In spite of his sins 
and his sorrows, how much higher in the scale of humanity than the Donatelio of 
early days ! — "So changed, yet still, in a deeper sense, so much the same ! He had 
traveled in a circle, as all things heavenly and earthly do, and now came back to his 
original self, with an inestimable treasure of improvement won from an experience 
of pain." 

This spiritual discipline, in one form or another, comes to us all. Sometimes 
as joy, but oftener in the guise of supreme sorrow and disillusion. Pain and disap- 
pointment are hard to bear ; they cannot be borne without inexpressible grief of heart, 
but when they come, a man has little wisdom if he does not force them to yield their 
highest benefit. Out of these nameless, lonely Gethsemanes have come some of the 
sweetest spirits that have adorned humanity. 

Perhaps the great poets and idealists render no finer service to their fellows 
than that of revealing to blinder eyes those mysterious compensations which may 
spring out of loss and calamity: 

*'For life is not as idle ore, 
But iron dug from central gloom, 
And heated hot loith burning fearSy 
And dipt in baths of hissing tears. 
And battered by the shocks of doom 
To shape and use/' 

THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 

A beautiful mind is the one possession that age cannot wither nor custom 
stale. Its charm increases with years and experience, even as the glass found in old 
Assyrian monuments has been invested \\ith a thousand delicate tints and beauties 
by the wonder-working hand of Time. 

It is only through his highest affections and aspirations that a man can hope 
to retain the freshness of youth. Without these the human spirit grows old and 
blase long before the hair is white. However broken with years and sorrows, the 
moment the nobler faculties assert themselves, behold ! he finds the petition of Mignon 
granted, — 

"Make me again forever young." 

In this fine spiritual charm lay the perennial attractiveness of Madame de 
Sevigne. Beloved and admired by all who knew her, she hastened, like the wise 
woman that she was, to lay up for herself imperishable treasures. At forty she 
wrote: "Youth is in itself So amiable, that, were the soul as perfect as the body, we 
could not forbear adoring it; but when youth is past, we should endeavor to supply 
the loss of personal charms by the graces and perfections of the mind. I have long 
made this the subject of meditation, and am determined to work every day at my 
mind, my soul, my heart, and my sentiments." 

It was no mere physical charm which secured to Madame Recamier the admir- 
ation of her contemporaries down to three score years and ten. Old and blind, with 
her figure slightly bent and her youthful bloom gone, she still seemed lovely and 

{33] 



attractive as in the days of her youth, for the beauty of her soul was only the more 
apparent through the ruins Time had wrought in the earthly house which inclosed it. 
In these ever-growing lives is to be found the secret of true beauty, the foun- 
tain of youth Ponce de Leon sought so long in vain. 

DIVINE COMPASSION 

God is so much kinder, so much more merciful than man. No lot so dark but 
He sends some little ray of light to gild the gloom, and poor, erring mortals, outcast 
from human society, are not outside the pale of His mercy and love. 

Nowhere in recent literature has this found finer expression than in Hall 
Caine's story of "The Deemster." How grandly pathetic is the figure of the old 
Archbishop, when, with the affections of the father struggling with the duty and 
convictions of the priest, he pronounces condemnation upon his only son, and sees 
him go forth, as he thinks, to both temporal and eternal death. The poor prodigal, 
cast out from among men and his name blotted out from the book of the living, even 
in the dark and desert place stiU finds over him the fatherly hand of God. Little bj' 
little he awakens to the real things of life; the great nature, so long dormant, is 
quickened; and, learning by the things which he suflFered, he grew at last into a nobly 
spiritual manhood, and became the savior of his people. 

Then the good Archbishop perceives "that the punishments of men are but as 
the punishments of children, and the Father's face is over all." Through all the 
fever heats of life, how comforting to poor humanity, with its manifold sins and 
transgressions, is the thought that still "God's greatness flows around our incom- 
pleteness, — 'round our restlessness, His rest." 

A great and unselfish affection is always redemptive and purifying in its 
influence. 

SPIRITUALITY 

Above all earthly possessions, a woman should prize that whiteness of mind 
which is the best part of her womanly birthright, and seek to augment it more and 
more as the years roll on, by filling the mind with beautiful thoughts and images 
and ideals. Only so can she attain to what the old poets call "a woman's mak'dom 
and fairness." By constant dwelling on whatsoever is lovely, the spirit grows like 
unto it, and becomes at last a temple and a shrine. 



Nothing tends more powerfully than a succession of shallow, vagrant fancies 
to dull and dissipate all the finer instincts of the soul. Fidelity is to human char- 
acter what the key-stone is to the arch. Without it everything crumbles. 



THE POWER OF GENTLENESS 

Save an evil temper, there is, perhaps, upon this earth no greater enemy to 
domestic happiness than a harsh, domineering spirit. Such a disposition, in either 
man or woman, has power to convert the fairest garden into a dreary desert. 

"Command," says Herbert Spencer, "is a blight to the affections. Whatsoever 
of refinement — ^whatsoever of beauty — whatsoever of poetry, there is in the passion 
that unites the sexes, withers up and dies in the cold atmosphere of authority. 
Native as they are to such widely separated regions of our nature, love and coercion 
cannot possibly flourish together. The one grows out of our best feelings; the other 
lias its root in our worst. Love is sympathetic; coercion is callous. Love is gentle; 
coercion is harsh. Love is self-sacrificing; coercion is selfish. How then can they 
co-exist? It is the property of the first to attract, whilst it is that of the last 
to repel; and, conflicting as they thus are, it is the constant tendency of each to 
destroy the other." Only by the obliteration of this desire to rule and dictate does 
ideal love become possible. 

No womanly woman ever desires to rule a man she sincerely loves and looks 
up to, in any arbitrary way which detracts from his dignity and manhood. Her 
sway over him, should she be so happy as to possess any, must be won and kept 
through the persuasion which love teaches. Anything else is worthless to her and 
degrading to him. 

[84] 



Gentleness and self-sacrifice are the life and soul of every high relation. 
Between two finely-touched spirits there should exist that divine strife as to which 
shall be most generous and unselfish. 

"Love that asketh love again, 
Finds the barter naught but pain; 
Love that giveth in full store 
Aye receives as much and more. 

"Love exacting nothing back 
Never knoweth any lack; 
Love, compelling love to pay, 
Sees him bankrupt every day." 
*Midland Monthly, 1895-6 

GETTYSBURG MEMORIES 

The reunion of the blue and the gray on the field of Gettysburg awakens 
thrilling recollections in all who love their country. In my childhood I once heard 
a dear old friend of my parents relate her experiences, for her home lay in the track 
of the contending armies. They were prosperous people, and she caused large quanti- 
ties of food to be prepared and dealt bread to the hungry, friend and foe alike. After 
the battle she went over that field of blood, a dreadful spectacle — men and horses 
lying in wild confusion. She told how carefully they were obliged to tread for fear 
of stepping on a shell. Another old acquaintance, who lived in her youth at 
Emmettsburg, relates how she and another young girl left their homes that morning 
on some errand and were met by men who hurried them to a place of safety, saying 
there was going to be a fight that day and they were likely to be killed. To return 
home was impossible, so they took refuge in the nearest place. Later she saw the 
Confederate troops retreat, distressed, dejected, smoke begrimed, with arms in slings 
and heads bandaged, leading horses often wounded, too. 

Henry Ward Beecher, in his interesting story, "Norwood," gives a fine 
description of the three-days' battle and the terrific cannonade, "a clangor of death 
such as had never been heard upon this continent." Apparently the Union guns were 
silenced, but it w^as a deceitful calm which brooded over Cemetery Ridge, and the 
wonderful charge of Pickett and his brave Virginians broke like a great wave and 
then rolled back before the steadfast valor of the opposing army. This was the 
beginning of the end of the Southern Confederacy. The battle was not theirs, but 
God's, and they fought against the stars in their courses. Yet to blue and gray alike 
belongs the meed of praise for deathless courage and constancy. But all who have 
visited the national cemeteries must echo the words of Mrs. Burton Harrison of 
Virginia, that "nothing is worth war." In the victories of peace must be sought the 
true grandeur of nations. 

HISTORY'S STANDPATTERS 

Every earnest and consecrated man who endeavors to lead humanity to higher 
political or religious levels is straightway assailed as a demagogue or a rub-a-dub 
agitator, and becomes a target for evil-doers. No doubt Pharoah and his court 
regarded Moses as a dangerous and altogether pestilent fellow, while the Pharisees 
held exactly that opinion of the gentle Nazarene who brought life and immortality 
to light. The grandest man of his age, John Wickliffe, and all his followers, were 
dubbed Lollards or "idle babblers" by the standpatters of the fourteenth century, 
yet Wickliife's memory is green, while his enemies and traducers have wended on 
into well-deserved oblivion. Even the great and good Gladstone was pursued by 
Disraeli, the arch enemy of progress, with a venomous hatred and abuse shocking 
to all just men. 

The history of the standpatter in history has seldom been a noble or an in- 
spiring one. From Socrates down to our own day the genuine reactionary has ever 
been of the same mental and spiritual type as the old Stuart and Bourbon Kings 
of whom Napoleon said that they never forget anything and never learned any- 
thing. The renewed mind and ever-growing life is always progressive. "To make 
habitually a new estimate," says Emerson, "that is elevation." In this great national 
crisis every true American should scorn to be a reactionary, for now, as always, 
it means to be out of step with the onward and upward movement of our age and 
race. — The Colonial, Boston, Mass., 1915. 

[251 



THE SPIRIT OF THE WEST 

For what avail the plough or sail, 
Or land or life, if freedom fail? 

— Emerson. 



At the beginning of the Great War thousands of Americans thrilled with indig- 
nation at the invasion of Belgium, and at heart were far from neutral. But in the 
main, the issues were clouded. To many it looked like one of those age-old Euro- 
pean struggles, such as the Baroness von Suttner describes and deplores in her fa- 
mous book, "Lay Down Your Arms." That author has preached the gospel of peace 
to thousands of American clubwomen, scouting all arguments for war as worthy 
of Mephistopheles himself. 

The time-honored policy of the United States has been to stand aloof from the 
dissensions of the Old World. Might not this, too, be one of the ever-recurring "vicis- 
situdes of European politics or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her 
friendships and enmities," from which Washington had warned America to keep 
away? Little by little the issues have been made clear to all right-thinking persons, 
and the conviction forced upon them that this is a turning point in the world's his- 
tory — no selfish local struggle, but a battle for the freedom of all mankind. 

Bancroft tells us that before the American Revolution, in every mansion and 
farm-house of New England, the question of armed resistance was debated as if God 
were hearkening. Never has there been more soul-searching inquiry by intelligent, 
high-minded men and women than into the causes of this world conflict, and our duty 
in the present crisis. Men and women of the Great West who hated war, when the 
decisive moment came, with sorrowful but courageous hearts stood loyally behind 
Woodrow Wilson as the United States moved slowly but surely towards the ir- 
repressible conflict. This is as true of the West as of the East. 

Our honored President has taken his rightful place as one of the world's leaders 
and spokesmen. A man of vision and courage, he is fitted to be the great leader of a 
great nation, voicing in words that will echo down the ages the noblest instincts and 
traditions of the American people. An Englishman has well said: 

"In this great hour a new note has been struck — the note of world patriotism. 

"The mere politician has his ear to the ground — how should he hear the message 
of the stars? The president went up into the mountain heights where dwells the 
soul of the American people; there he learned the message of the stars; and when 
he came down from the mountain, he bore with him a tablet on which were graven 
the words: 

" 'The Right is more precious than Peace'.'* 

Only the ever-deepening conviction that principles vital to the human race are at 
stake, could have reconciled this peace-loving people to our entrance into war. But 
some things are more than life, and our beloved country has chosen wisely and 
greatly. 

The call to the colors has stirred the heart of America to its depths. With 
emotions too deep for tears Los Angeles has seen her young Sons of Liberty start on 
the long road that leads to France. It was the most solemn, yet glorious sight that 
this city ever beheld. 

"So nigh is grandeur to our dust. 
So near is God to man. 
When Duty whispers low. Thou must, 
The youth replies, I can." 

Fine courage was there, and fortitude, both in those who went and in those who 
stayed. The old spirit is not dead, and the men and women of today are as valiant 
for truth as ever their forefathers were. 

We may well be proud of our soldiers of freedom. No Red Cross Knight ever 
rode on nobler quest. Lured by no lust of gold or conquest, theirs is the spirit of 
Crusaders, fighting to make this old earth a nobler place. 

[261 



Some of the soldier boys bear names with a foreign sound, while others are sug- 
gestive of the early days of our Country's history. The old blood is calling, and they 
are answering, "Here am I." In the troublous days which lie before us, God who 
brought over the fathers will sustain the sons. Those fine lines of Fitz-Green Halleck 
on the Pilgrims of 1620, are as fitting for the Pilgrims of 1917, animated by a great 
purpose and sailing over seas more perilous than even the Mayflower knew. 

They came — a life devoting band — 

In winter o'er the sea; 
Fearless they left their fatherland. 

Home of their infancy. 
And when they battled to be free, 

'Twas not for us and ours alone; 
Millions may trace their destiny 

To the wild beach they trod upon. 

The brave on Bunker Hill who stood, 

And fearless fought and died. 
Felt in their veins the pilgrims' blood, 

Their spirit and their pride. 
That day's last sunbeam was their last. 

That well- fought field their death-bed scene; 
But 'twas that battle's bugle-blast 

That bade the march of mind begin. 

It sounded o'er the Atlantic waves; 

"One struggle more, and then 
Hearts that are now to tyrants slaves 

May beat like hearts of men. 
The Pilgrims' names may then be heard 

In other tongues a battle word — 
The gathering war-cry of the free. 

And other nations, from their sleep 
Of bondage waking, long may keep. 

Like us, the Pilgrims' Jubilee." 

Published in the Old Colony Memorial, Plymouth, Mass., November, 1917. 



127] 



HENRY THE FIFTH AND HIS TIMES 



Foreword: Standing at a turning point in the world's history, it is not easy 
to turn from the living present to the men and events of 500 years ago. Ye* 
there has never been a time when English history has meant so much to the Amer- 
ican people, sharing as we do its glorious inheritance of freedom, its wonderful litera- 
ture, and the language Shakespeare spake. As a nation it is a great honor to be 
heirs to this Story of Liberty. 

In fine and lasting colors, Shakespeare has limned for future generations the 
portrait of Henry the Fifth. In spite of anachronisms and historical inaccuracies, 
the world for all time will continue to think of the Great King in the terms .of 
Shakespeare. 

Born into the world with an individuality all his own, every man is also the 
product of heredity and environment. It is impossible to separate a man from the 
spirit of his age. Unconsciously to himself, it colors his thought and his actions. 
Henry the Fifth was a typical medieval hero, embodying at once the greatness of 
his time, as well as its limitations. In him, as in a mirror, we behold — 

"The very image and body of the time. 
It's form and pressure." 

His lot was cast at a momentous period of English history. Old things were 
passing away, and new and powerful forces were at work shaping the destiny of 
the Anglo-Saxon race for centuries to come. The fourteenth century was emphati- 
cally a transition period. Old faiths were losing their inspiration, old forms of 
government were changing, and the social fabric was undergoing strange transfor- 
mations. 

The Crusades had lighted in some measure the darkness of the Middle Ages 
with the superior refinement and intellectuality of the Saracen civilization, loosening 
at the same time the bonds of feudalism. 

The work of Wickliffe, "The Morning Star of the Reformation," was done and 
well done. His ashes mingled with the Severn, but like a vine running underground, 
his great message of spiritual freedom was carried through all the by-ways of Eng- 
land by Lollard priests and laymen, thus preparing the soil for the mighty harvest 
of the Reformation. 

It is to be regretted that in matters of religion the vision of Henry the Fifth 
was obscured by the darkness of his age, and he dealt severely with the Lollards. 
Sincerely pious and devout, it was not given him to grasp the largeness of Wick- 
liffe's teachings, and to follow that Seeker after God into untrodden pathways of 
spiritual truth. Religious toleration, as we understand it, was an unknown quantity 
in the days of Henry the Fifth. 

Socialism had lifted its head against the whole system of social inequality which 
had till then passed unquestioned as the divine order of the world. The long strug- 
gle between capital and labor, privilege and democracy, was ushered in — a struggle 
which will never cease until industrial equality is equal to political equality throughout 
the world. A spirit fatal to privilege breathed in the rhymes which condensed the 
levelling doctrines of John Ball — 

"When Adam delved and Eve span, 
Who was then the gentleman?" 

The fourteenth century was characterized outwardly by great pomp and splen- 
dor, but underneath that glittering surface lay a weltering mass of human misery 
which found a spokesman in Piers Plowman's Vision, 

[S8J 



Nothing is more deeply interesting than a study of the development of Eng- 
lish language and literature. Banished by the Norman conquest from fashionable 
life, from schools and pulpits and courts of law, the Anglo-Saxon speech lived on in 
the hearts, and upon the lips, of the common people, and by 1362 English superseded 
the French tongue in all the main business of life. WicklifFe, the father of Eng- 
lish prose writing, made it once more a literary tongue, while the poetry of Chaucer 
marked the final settlement of the English language as a fitting vehicle for the his- 
tory and experiences of a great people. The Canterbury Tales, so distinctively Eng- 
lish, have been called "the well of English undefiled." It was this new born pride in 
the national language which gives significance to the pathetic lament of Mowbray in 
Richard the Second, when he is sentenced to banishment for life; — 

"The language I have learned these forty years^ 
My native English, now I must forego; 
And now my tongue's use is to me no more 
Than an unstringed viol, or a harp." 

The long movement towards national unity which had been going on since the 
Norman Conquest had resulted in the formation of an English people, one in heart 
and soulf and whose love of country finds fitting expression in the words of Shakes- 
peare: — 

"This royal throne of Kings, this sceptred isle, 

This fortress built by Nature for herself 

Against infection and the hand of war, 

This happy breed of men, this little world, 

This precious stone set in the silver sea 

Wliich serves it in the office of a wall. 

Or as a moat defensive to a house 

Against the envy of less happier lands. 

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, 

This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land." 

Next to the Christian religion, perhaps the greatest boon ever bestowed upon 
mankind has been that of civil liberty. With all its faults, the Medieval Church 
preached incessantly the Scriptural doctrine of kingship: "He that ruleth over men 
must be just, ruling in the fear of God." The trenchant logic of schoolmen made 
short work of royal claims to irresponsible power and unquestioning obedience. 
The constitutional restrictions on royal authority, the right of the whole nation to 
deliberate and decide on its own affairs and to have a voice in the selection of the 
administrators of government, had never been so clearly stated before. And this 
theory of government was carried over the length and breadth of the land by hum- 
ble English friars preaching on every village green and in every market place, until 
the love of freedom and self-government entered into the very warp and woof of 
England's being. 

It is a far cry from King John to Henry the Fifth, from the Magna Charta to 
an English Parliament established on a sure foundation and a bulwark forever 
against arbitrary power. From the earliest period of English history there had 
existed a Great Council of the Realm, composed of powerful nobles and' church dig- 
nitaries, but in no sense a representative body. But the English idea of represen- 
tative government was born in 1295, when Edward the First summoned burgesses 
from the towns and knights from the counties, for the greater convenience of the 
King in taxing his subjects. "In his calling together the estates of the realm," says 
the historian Green, "Edward the First determined the course of English history. 
From the first moment of its appearance the Parliament became the center of Eng- 
lish affairs. The hundred years which follow its assembly at Westminster saw its 
rise into a power which checked and overawed the Crown." 

From causes now unknown, knights and burgesses finally drew together 
under the name of "The Commons.'* From this body the constitutional liberties of 
England were to be evolved in due season. Concerned at first with voting supplies 
to the Crown, the House of Commons gradually extended its powers until it deposed 
Kings, brought Ministers and unworthy favorites of the King to judgment, and de- 
manded an account of the expenditure of moneys voted by the people. AH that 
English law and liberty have since become lay enfolded in this germ as the oak lies 

[29] 



hidden within the acorn. Two hundred years later that intrepid champion of Par- 
liamentary freedom, Sir John Eliot, declared in words of fire that "None had gone 
about to break Parliament, but in the end Parliament had broken them." With the 
beheading of Charles the First and the exile of his son, James the Second, the last 
vestige of the divine right of Kings vanished from Old England, and henceforth an 
English King ruled by an Act of Parliament and not by any preposterous claim 
based upon some special and secret alliance with the Almighty. 

There is a soul of goodness in things evil, and the Hundred Years War gave 
opportunity for the growth and development of parliamentary power. "Fortunately 
for England, peace was impossible. War went on ceaselessly, and with the march 
of war went on the ceaseless growth of Parliament." Every grant of money was 
preceded by a petition of grievances. Enmeshed in wars. Kings and rulers strug- 
gled vainly against these strange new demands of Parliament, that "setter-up and 
puller-down of Kings." The constitutional freedom thus secured to English speak- 
ing peoples has been the very cornerstone of democracy, of our own democracy, 
towards which James Bryce says"''the rest of mankind is forced to move, some with 
slower, some with swifter, but all with unresting feet." In that most interesting 
book, "Shakespeare and the Founders of Liberty in America," its author, Charles 
Mills Gayley, says: "It is to Shakespeare's England that the Americans of the 
Colonies owed — that Americans of today, of whatever stock they be, owe — the his- 
toric privileges that have made the New World a refuge for the oppressed, and a 
hope for humanity. The sapling of civil liberty had drawn vigor from deep roots 
of Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman consciousness, and for centuries had strained steadily 
upward. In the seventeenth century it towered as an oak, and sheltered with its far- 
spread arms the Britons at home and Britons in America." 

Three hundred years ago men of that Anglo-Saxon breed laid strong and deep 
the foundations of our own beloved country, and the gates of hell shall not prevail 
against it! 

Much now known to us was then hidden in futurity, but socially, religiously, and 
politically, England was undergoing mighty changes when Henry the Fifth opened 
his eyes upon this world. The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were the seed 
bed of modern England, and even in that far-off time we find Henry the Fifth ruling 
his nation along constitutional lines, a democratic King according to his light. 

No view of the Middle Ages is complete which does not take into consideration 
the institution of Chivalry, with its uplifting influence upon the thoughts and ac- 
tions of men. As with all lofty ideals, the faith too often outran the practice, but 
none the less chivalrous ideals helped mightily to teach 

"High thoughts and honorable deeds, 

And love of truth. 

And all that makes a man." 

Through the darkness and limitations of that rude age men were climbing 
slowly but steadily upward, letting the ape and tiger die. 

In reading Homer's Iliad, one revolts at the spectacle of great Hector dragged 
around the walls of Troy at the chariot wheels of Achilles; yet there is no evidence 
that his savage slayer was regarded with the abhorrence such a deed would excite 
at the present day. "We do not see," says Guizot, "that amongst the people of the 
Homeric poems there was abroad in the air or had penetrated into the imaginations 
of man, any idea more lofty or more pure than their everyday actions; the heroes 
of Homer seem to have no misgivings about their brutishness, fheir ferocity, their 
greed, their egotism; there is nothing in their souls superior to the deeds of their 
lives." 

Through all the wars and tumults and moral and social evils of the Medieval 
time, the noble ideals of Chivalry hovered over men like the pillar of cloud and of 
fire. "The most splendid fact of the Middle Ages was Knighthood, that noble soar- 
ing of the imaginations and souls towards the ideal of Christian virtue and sol- 
dierly honor." The twenty-six articles sworn to by each aspirant for knighthood 
led upward to the stature of the perfect man. The highest praise that could be 
given a knight was that "he was ever plain, faithful and true." Not the least of 
this knightly vow was their pledge "to protect the weak; to keep their faith in- 
violably with all the world; and to be faithful keepers of their work and pledged 
faith." In harmony with these standards of knightly honor, that famous warrior, 

[30] 



Bertrand Dti Guesclin, "the best soldier and truest gentleman of France," more 
than 500 years ago charged his soldiers to "Remember that whenever they were at 
war, the churchmen, the women, the children, and the poor were not their enemies." 
It was chivalry working in him, both to will and to do, which prompted Henry 
the Fifth to say: "We give express charge, that in our marches through the 
country, there be nothing compelled from the villages, nothing taken but paid for, 
none of the French upbraided or abused in disdainful language." 

In the light of the terrible events of the past four years, when the clock of 
civilization is in danger of being turned back a thousand years, we must mention 
in passing, as a matter of history, that chivalry, with its high ideals of tenderness 
to the weak and mercy to the vanquished, took no root in Teutonic soil. 

Born in an age of warfare, Henry the Fifth was pre-eminently a soldier. Take 
him for all in all, he was a brave and manly m^n. The finest description of ideal 
knighthood ever given is in Malory's "Morte D' Arthur:" 

"Ah, Lancelot, thou were the head of all Christian Knights; 

And thou were the courtliest knight that ever bare shield; ' 

And thou were the truest friend to thy lover that ever bestrode horse; 

And thou were the kindest man that ever struck with sword; 

And thou were the meekest man and the gentlest that ever ate in hall 

among ladies; 
And thou were the sternest Knight to thy mortal foe that ever put spear 

in rest." 

So far as human infirmity would permit, Henry the Fifth appears to have fol- 
lowed this grand old English ideal of perfect manhood. 

We are told that "he who ruleth his spirit is mightier than he that taketh a 
city," and the finest word that has come down to us of the hero of Agincourt, is 
that he was "Conqueror of himself." 

When crowned King of England in Westminster, Henry said: "The first act 
of my reign shall be to pardon all who have offended me; and I pray God that if 
He foresees I am like to be the other than a j ust and good King, He may be pleased 
to take me from the world, rather than seat me on a throne, to live a public ca- 
lamity to my country." At his death, in 1422, he was regarded as "the mirror of 
justice, the unconquered King, the Flower and Pride of Chivalry." According to 
the standards of his age, Henry the Fifth was richly endowed with "the King-be- 
coming graces" Shakespeare speaks of: 



"Justice, verity, temperance, stableness, 
Bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness. 
Devotion, patience, courage, fortitude." 



"By his light did all the chivalry of England move to do brave acts." 

The whirligig of time brings strange contrasts, and after more than five cen- 
turies these ancient foemen, who strove together at Crecy and Agincourt, united 
now by a great purpose, are standing shoulder to shoulder in the fiercest battle 
for human liberty that has ever been waged upon this earth. 

The fame of Agincourt pales before the glories of Picardy. Who that believes 
in immortahty can doubt that these brave men are compassed about with a mighty 
cloud of witnesses. The souls of Alfred the Great and Henry the Fifth, of St. Louis 
of France and Joan of Arc; the souls of Hampden and Pym, and Milton and 
Cromwell, and our own Washington, the souls of all the great and good of every 
nation and tongue, are keeping watch and ward over these valiant men, with their 
backs to the wall, fighting against fearful odds for the safety of their homes and 
the freedom of mankind. Thousands of them are content to die that freedom 
may live. Never since time began have these men of France and of the Anglo- 
Saxon breed shown more gloriously "the mettle of their pasture." In the words of 
another mighty man of valor, "Whensoever, wheresoever, or howsoever, they may 
be called upon to make their exit from this world, it will be as free men." 

C3U 



"Thrice-armed are they who hath their quarrel just," and the stars in their 
courses are lighting for these Sons of Liberty. In God's own good time and way 
it will once more be demonstrated to a waiting world that not by power and might, 
but by the spirit of the Lord of Hosts are men and nations strong and great. 

And when the victory is won, as it will be won, and the world is made safe 
for democracy, shall we not say in the words of Henry the Fifth: — 

"Oh God, Thy arm was here; 
And not to us, but to Thy arm alone, ascribe we all." 

The thought that was in his heart will be in our heart also: 

"Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us. 
But unto Thee be the praise and the power and the glory forever." 

—The Galpin Shakespeare Club, May 8, 1918. 



im 



2/1/^ 



A REVIEW OF "SHAKESPEARE AND THE FOUNDA^ 
>TIQN OF LIBERTY IiN AMERICA" 



*Charles Mills Gayley, Dean of Berkeley and Governor of the Society of 
Mayflower Descendants in California. 

During the coming year the Galpin Club will study The Tempest, and in re- 
viewing this book we shall first consider briefly the third chapter, which treats of 
the sources from which Shakespeare drew the material for his wonderful drama. 

The Tempest is based upon the shipwreck of the Sea Venture in the Bermudas, 
the Sea Venture being one of a fleet of seven good ships and pinnaces which, in 
June, 1609, set out from Plymouth, England, for Virginia. It seems conclusive that 
Shakespeare had inside information which could have come to him only through 
intimate association with those large-minded Elizabethans who were devising liberal 
things for the New World beyond the Atlantic. Some of the most striking inci- 
dents in the play were drawn from a confidential letter written by William Strachey, 
one of the survivors of the wrecked Sea Venture, and which was not made public 
until long after the occurrence. Its contents were known only to those men who 
were directing the afi^airs of the Virginia Company, to whom the letter was sent. 

Nothing in Shakespeare's play can exceed the vividness of William Strachey's 
description of the horrors of that storm. The fire flaming here and there over the 
ship, and in many places at once, is given only in the letter of Strachey, and in- 
corporated by Shakespeare into his great drama, and attributed by him to the magic 
of Ariel. To students of Shakespeare it is well worth while to read in detail the 
third chapter of Mr. Gayley's book. 

The aim of that author is not so much a study of Shakespeare's plays as to 
demonstrate conclusively the close affiliation of the great dramatist with those con- 
temporary thinkers and statesmen, the Earl of Southampton, Sir Edwin Sandys, 
Richard Hooker, and others, who were leading their native land to higher levels. 
Those freedom-loving men left an indelible mark upon the fortunes of Colonial 
Virginia and upon the New England Colonies, and laid the foundations of consti- 
tutional government in the New World. 

Three hundred years ago the rights of Colonies were not well understood by 
European rulers, and a liberal party, or Patriots, as they were styled in Parlia- 
ment and in the Virginia Company, were struggling to plant colonies in the New 
World under liberal auspices, and to secure to the inhabitants and their posterity 
"all the liberties, franchises, and immunities of British subjects." In 1618, through 
the efforts of these Patriots, the first representative government in America was 
established in Virginia. It provided that "no orders from London should be bind- 
ing on the colony unless ratified by her Assembly. Upon the charters thus culminating 
all future rights and liberties of the colonies, north and south, of the Revolutionary 
America of 1775, and of the Republic of today are built." 

The real purport of Mr. Gayley's most interesting book is to bring home to 
our minds the fact of the common heritage of England and America, and a deeper 
perception that the future of the world depends largely upon the harmonious co- 
operation of English-speaking peoples. The Anglo-Saxon race is the natural cus- 
todian of the sacred fire of liberty and constitutional government. 

"America," says Justin McCarthy, "can never afford in all her greatness to be 
unmindful of the land of Shakespeare and Cromwell, and John Milton; the land 
that gave her the dauntless men and women of the Mayflower, who with 'empires in 
their brains,' and the love of liberty in their hearts, laid the cornerstone of Amer- 
ican greatness." 

Our own historian, John Fiske, says of England a quarter of a century later, 
"If ever there were men who laid down their lives in the cause of all mankind, it 
was those grim old Ironsides whose watchwords were texts of Holy Writ, whose 

13?] 



t)attle cries were hymns of praise. By saving liberty in England they also gaved it 
in America." 

The student of history is often struck with the intimate connection of events 
far removed in time and space. Everything is related to that which has gone be- 
fore, and to that which follows after. The beginnings of our country are deeply 
rooted in English history. Our birthright privileges and ancestral spirit are writ 
large on every page of Anglo-Saxon history since the days of King Alfred and 
the Magna Charta, of Naseby and Marston Moor. The Barons' War, led by Simon 
de Montfort, laid a sure foundation for yet undiscovered America. It is as impos- 
sible to understand early American history without constant reference to England 
and its great intellectual lights in society and government as it would be to study 
Hamlet with Hamlet left out. The finest minds of the Colonial age, as well as 
the minds of Washington and Adams and Jefferson, were colored by the traditions 
and principles they had drawn in with their mother*s milk. 

Of this spirit was born the book of Charles Mills Gayley, an American of the 
Americans. It is like a window opening into the inmost mind of Shakespeare. We 
see him, not alone as a poet rolling his eyes in a fine frenzy from heaven to earth, 
from earth to heaven, but as a man among men, entering with keen sympathy and 
fellowship into the most important problems of human life and human government 
which it is given the sons of men to solve. 

How far was Shakespeare influenced by the spirit of his times? In various 
ways Mr. Gayley has answered the question. Several plays reveal the very image 
and body of Shakespeare's time, its form and pressure. Again and again, in sonnet 
and drama, he has given utterance to ideas akin to those which the Patriots of 
England sought to realize. The reforms that Sir Edwin Sandys sought to reduce 
to a concrete form in the New World, Shakespeare, while American colonies were 
yet in the making, was implying poetically in the "weal of the common," founded on 
ordered service, justice and patriotism. 

In the sixteenth century, the spirit whicl^ had grown so great could no longer 
be confined within the narrow limits of the little "nook-shotten isle" called England. 
In the days of Elizabeth the eyes of that sturdy and intrepid race were turning 
towards the brave New World beyond the sea, and so keen an intellect as Shakes- 
peare's must inevitably have shared the hopes and fears and ambitions of his 
countrymen. 

"Shakespeare was acquainted with more than one of the English statesmen 
who wrested from King James the colonial charters by which, between 1606 and 1620, 
English liberty was first planted in Virginia and New England. That he had con- 
fidential relations with these English Patriots, the founders of American liberty, 
is proved by the contents and source of one of his plays. That Shakespeare was 
in sympathy with the teachings of the most eminent moral and political master of 
the liberal movement in England is manifest in many of the poet's works." 

Mr. Gayley goeS on to say that the purpose of his book is to show "that the 
thoughts and even the words of that liberal thinker, Richard Hooker, passed into 
the minds of our revolutionary fathers and into the Declaration of Independence, 
and that the principles common to Shakespeare and Hooker, to Sir Edwin Sandys, 
Southampton, and the other Patriots of Seventeenth Century England, are the 
principles of liberty which America enjoys today." He also reminds us that, in 
the American Revolution, "the colonists were but asserting their rights as English- 
^nen under the charter and common law, and that the hearts of the truest and 
noblest Englishmen at home were with them in the struggle; that the heritage of 
today is a heritage which for 1400 years has been ripening for the British Empire 
and America alike." 

The mighty struggle from which the world has just emerged was at bottom 
but an old foe with a new face. George the Third and the Hohenzollerrts were 
birds of the self-same feather, both of them terrible exponents of German despotism. 
"Washington," says Mr. Gayley, "was but asserting against a despotic sovereign of 
German blood and broken English speech the prerogative of the Anglo-Saxon breed, 
the faith of his liberal brothers in England." "The nursing mother of the three 
great modern democracies — the United States of America, the Union of Free Com- 
monwealths styled the British Empire, and the present French Republic — was the 
liberal England of Shakespeare and Hooker, and the Patriots of early Seventeenth 
Century England." 

[34J 



One strong impelling reason for emigrating to the New World was the longing 
in the hearts of the Pilgrim exiles to presence to their latest posterity the name 
and language, and laws, of their native land. "They were, every man and woman 
of them, English to the backbone. All alike were of that stock and breeding which 
Tnade the Englishmen of the days of Bacon and Shakespeare." Under the spell of 
Mr. Gayley's most illuminating book, the words of Governor Bradford of Plymouth 
Colony, the first American historian, uttered almost three centuries ago, take on 
new meaning. In his famous History of Plymouth Plantation, the Genesis and 
Exodus of American history. Governor Bradford, recounting for their children's 
children all the way the Pilgrims had been led by the Most High God, said: 

"May and ought not the children of these fathers to say, our fathers were 
Englishmen, who came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in this wilder- 
ness. But they cried unto the Lord, and He heard their voice, and looked on their 
adversity. Let them confess before the Lord his loving kindness, and His wonderful 
works unto the children of men." 

All that we enjoy today has been bought with a price. We are children of yes- 
terday and heirs of all the ages. 

In every epoch of history we find here and there master minds that act as 
pathfinders and pioneers, blazing the way for human progress. What John Milton 
was to a later period of English history, Richard Hooker was to the Elizabethan 
world. Erasmus and Sir Thomas More and Richard Hooker dreamed of a nobler 
world than any yet realized, and those visions were to be the beacon lights of fu- 
ture generations. It is difficult for us to comprehend how deeply Richard Hooker 
colored the best thought of his own day, and his influence widening like a circle in 
the water, still made itself felt when the Declaration of Independence was written 
a century and a half later. "To the broadest-minded, most learned, and most elo- 
quent thinker and philosopher of the sixteenth century, not alone Sir Edwin Sandys 
and his compeers, but the initiators of the American Revolution owed the central 
concepts of their political philosophy." The political ideas in Richard the Second 
and in all of Shakespeare's plays, which refer to the relations of ruler and ruled, 
have been directly influenced by Hooker's ecclesiastical polity. 

Only second to Richard Hooker was his pupil. Sir Edwin Sandys, "a man of 
rare gifts and knowledge and great resoluteness, the incomparable leader of the 
liberal statesmen, one of the greatest men of a great age." The noblest patriot of 
the first quarter of the seventeenth century. Sir Edwin Sandys, drafted the charter 
of 1609 for Virginia, and to him was largely due the charter of 1618, which se-f 
cured liberty and self-government to the Virginia Colony, and definitely created in 
the wilds of America a new House of Freedom. In 1618-19, Sir Edwin Sandys 
exerted his utmost efforts to secure a liberal charter for Plymouth Colony. The 
Pilgrims sailed away from their native land assured of "freedom of person, equality 
before the law, the right to participate in the government of themselves, and! to 
enjoy all liberties, franchises, and immunities as if they had been abiding within 
the realm of England." How deeply the leaders of the Mayflower enterprise had 
imbibed the spirit of Richard Hooker and Sir Edwin Sandys is evinced by their re- 
gard for the common weal, "each for all, and all for each," and for just and equal 
laws based upon the consent of the governed, and which were embodied in the com- 
pact drawn up and signed in the cabin of the Mayflower, November, 1620. Gov- 
ernor Winslow tells us that Sir Edwin Sandys loaned the Pilgrims 300 pounds with- 
out interest for three years, which was repaid. 

"Such," says Charles Mills Gay ley, "has been the service rendered by Sandys 
to the founders of New England. There can be no doubt that the qualities dis- 
played by William Brewster, as elder of the congregation in Leyden and afterwards 
in the Plymouth Colony, were colored by long association with his 'very loving 
friend,' Sir Edwin Sandys, as well as by a first-hand acquaintance with the printed 
word of Richard Hooker. This is reflected in the genial humanity, the liberal knowl- 
edge and outlook, the conservative wisdom, with which the historic Elder molded 
the civil polity of the first settlement in New England, and held in check tendencies 
elsewhere manifested toward religious bigotry and oppression." 

That eminent authority on Pilgram history. Rev. Henry Martyn Dexter, says: 
"The New Plymouth of 1620 found much of its best interpretation in the old life 
which, sadly, yet with a great hope, the Mayflower was leaving behind the hazy hills 
of Cornwall, as she drew away from them westward on her eventful voyage. The 

135] 



traditions, habits and methods of Old England became prime factors of their gi'eat 
endeavor here." The more we study this subject the deeper becomes our realiza- 
tion of the debt we owe to sixteenth and seventeenth century Englishmen. "The 
political principles that inspired Sandys, Southampton, Selden, and all that noble 
company, never died out of Virginia, never died out of the northern colony called 
New England. Disciples of Hooker, associates of Shakespeare, were the founders 
of the first republic in the New World." 

Since 1914 the attention of the civilized world has been drawn as perhaps never 
before to the rights of the individual and to the duty of the individual to the State. 
In imperial Germany the man was reduced to a mere cipher, of no more weight as 
a thinking being than a rivet or a bolt in a vast machine. In our own beloved coun-- 
''ry we have, perhaps, erred by going to the other extreme, and by permitting in- 
•^ividualism to run wild, oftentimes at the expense of the good of the whole. 

These great questions were as vital to Shakespeare's days as to our own. It is 
most interesting to consider how men like Hooker and Sandys and Shakespeare 
approached problems which are like the riddles of the Sphinx, and for which so- 
ciety must find a correct solution or perish. To that question of questions — What 
are the rights of the individual; what are his duties to the State? — ^both Hooker 
and Shakespeare have given answers as valid in our time as in theirs. The tones 
and accents of these great Elizabethans echo down the centuries, begetting in us a 
keener sense of our own duties and responsibilities as citizens of no mean country. 

That the voice of the people, that is of collective humanity, is really God 
speaking through man, his instrument, is one of the principles of Richard Hooker, 
and one which lies at the very root of American institutions. The origin of society 
and the body politic, and the concessions needful for the common good are ably 
set forth in the Ecclesiastical Polity of Hooker, and the concepts of Shakespeare are 
Shot through and through with the ideas of this great master. "No reader or thinker 
of that day could have escaped the influence of Hooker," says Mr. Gayley. The 
transition from Natural to Positive Law, the end being the Pursuit of Happiness, 
and the good of the majority; the Consent of the Governed, the Right of Revolu- 
tion, and Representative Government; were all familiar to the authors of the Am- 
erican Declaration of Independence one hundred and fifty years later through John 
Locke, the disciple of Hooker, and whose political philosophy was based upon the 
arguments of the master thinker of sixteenth century England. Richard Hooker's 
epoch-making book was as fatal as dynamite to theories of the divine right of kings 
and other fallacies peculiar to the Hohenzollern type of mind three centuries ago. 
Not only to Sir Edwin Sandys, but to Shakespeare, all just government was based 
upon the consent of the governed. 

Yet Shakespeare was no mere imitator or echo of Richard Hooker, or of 
any other man however eminent. The spirit of God was moving upon the face of 
the waters and these grand ideals pervaded the atmosphere of Shakespear'e Eng- 
land. The master-dramatist was singularly responsive to the noblest instincts and 
tendencies of his age and race. In Shakespeare's political creed there was no room 
for autocracy and the divine right of kings. He upheld a nation's right to dethrone 
an unworthy king. He believed in national unity and the duty of individuals to 
work together for the common good. The masses of Europe had not reached the 
level of today, and Democracy as we understand it was not the ideal of the seven- 
teenth century; but representative government so far as it had been evolved, had the 
approval of Shakespeare as it did that of Hooker and Sandys, and all that glorious 
company. 

The men who defended the Magna Charta, parliamentary freedom of speech and 
action, the responsibility of rulers, and the right of parliament to bring to judg- 
ment great officers of state, believed as our own forefathers did in the rule of "the 
Best." Hooker and Shakespeare and all the noblest minds of the time held that 
men who bear rule over their fellows should be chosen because of superior merit and 
fitness. "Let no one," says Shakespeare, "presume to wear an undeserved dignity." 
If it were possible to keep power and authority in the hands of the unselfish and the 
wise and the noble, we should have taken a long step towards the millennium. 

Such were the conceptions of government which were carried to America by its 
early founders. "The thoughts that were common to Hooker and Shakespeare and 
Shakespeare's friends, the dream of the well-ordered state where merit shall govern, 

[361 



the ideals of individual worth, duty, and patriotism. Were common to Oiir English 
forefathers, the planters of Virginia, the Pilgrims of the Mayflower of Plymouth, 
the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay. . . . Bradford and Brewster, Winthrop and En- 
dicott, John Cotton and Roger Williams, John Harvard and Thomas Hooker of New 
England, Alexander Whitaker, Clayborne and Nathaniel Bacon of Virginia, belong to 
the history of English ideals no less than to that of America."— -"It is to Shake- 
peare's England that the Americans of the colonies owed — that the Americans of to- 
day of whatever stock they be, owe — the historic privileges that have made the NeW 
World a refuge for the oppi'essed and a hope for humanity." 

How deeply the colonial mind was imbued with the the ideal of Libei*ty under 
the law, is shown by the famous definition given by Governor Winthrop of Massa- 
chusetts Bay, in 1645, and which has been pronounced by distinguished publicists 
the best definition of liberty in the English language. As defined by Winthrop, it 
was indeed a liberty for which a man should stand, if need be, not only at the 
hazard of his goods, but Of his life. 

The New World was a fruitful soil, and civil liberty and democracy took on 
large proportions from the outset. The noted preacher, Thomas Hooker, the founder 
of Hartford, Connecticut, in 1638 anticipated the fundamental principles of modern 
democracy. "The foundation of authority," he declared, "is laid in the free consent 
of people. They who have power to appoint officers and magistrates, it is in their 
power also, to set the bounds and limitations of the power and place into which they 
call them." The recall Of unworthy judges and legislators of all kinds was well 
known, both in theory and practice, in early New England. 

The names of the Earl of Southampton, of Pembroke, and Sir Edwin Sandys, 
are eternally affixed to the title deeds of liberty in the United States of America. 
Their zeal for freedom secured to Virginia and New England the priceless boon of 
representative government and equality before the Law. Neither the Dutch Colony 
of New Netherland, nor the French Colonies in Canada enjoyed the freedom and self* 
government of the English Colonies in America. 

Mr. Gayley's book is like a searchlight upon the colonial period of America. The 
seed sown by Hooker and Sandys, germinating and fructifying for one hundred and 
fifty years, resulted inevitably in the Declaration of Independence. The Colonial age 
Was but the necessary training and preparation of a great democracy fully equip- 
ped for a new experiment in the annals of mankind. 

Thomas Jetferson truly said that "the ball of the Revolution received the first 
impulse, not from the actors in the events, but from the first colonists." American 
Independence was but the natural harvest of seed sown throughout the Colonial 
period, and tracing backward to men of English race and speech in the old home 
land. The beginnings lay far back in the days of small things, when the leaders 
and workers of the Colonial time wrought together on the foundations of a Temple 
of Liberty, to be reared in its full beauty and majesty by other hands than theirs. 

Shakespeare and the founders of liberty abhorred the doctrines of Machiavelli, 
the Bernhardi of the sixteenth century. Both Machiavelli and modern Germany were 
actuated by the spirit of Mephistopheles — "the spirit that denies." This denial of all 
the great ideals of truth and justice, of freedom and common humanity between 
man and man, were utterly foreign to Shakespeare and his great contemporaries. 
Liberty and law grounded in righteousness, mercy, and peace, was the ideal of our 
forefathers; and Mr. Gayley justly says that "the liberty we enjoy today is what it 
is, primarily because Southampton, Sandys, and other patriots were Englishmen, 
because the highminded men of the Virginia Colony and the Bradfords, Brewsters, 
and Winthrop5 of New England were Englishmen, and established in the New World 
an advance guard of English liberty.*' 

Shakespeare was not the idle singer of an empty day, but every inch a man, 
deeply apprehending the most vital principles of human conduct and human gov- 
ernment. His plays are not mere echoes of something outside of him. Through them 
there is pulsing like a heartbeat his personal beliefs and convictions. He appre- 
ciated, as all truly great men must, the supreme value of the moral and the ethical. 
His justice is of the moral law, the same for dynasties and nations as for the in- 
dividual. No "scrap of paper" entered into Shakespeare's scheme of things. 

"There sits a judge in heaven, whom no king can corrupt*" 

t37] 



Like our own Lincoln, he framed immortal phrases, because he served immortal 
issues. For timeservers and corruption in high places he had all the scorn of an 
honest and manly heart. 

In an age of rank and social distinction, we catch notes of the New Democracy. 
The keynote had been struck two hundred years before by Chaucer in his high 
estimate of the worth and dignity of the personal soul, an idea which seems to be 
innate in the Anglo-Saxon race. "Honors thrive when rather from our acts we them 
derive, than our foregoers," says Shakespeare, and again, — 

"From lowest place whence virtuous things proceed. 
That place is dignified by the doer's deed." 

These convictions, voiced long ago in the England of our forefathers, lie at 
the root of all that is best worth while in America and life of today. 

The year 1588 was a turning-point in the world's history. The whole future of 
modern civilization was trembling in the balance. Of incalculable importance to 
mankind was the question whether it should be the world of the Spanish Inquisition, 
of Philip the Second, and the Duke of Alva, or the world of Shakespeare and Hamp- 
den and George Washington. No United States of America was possible until the 
naval power of Spain was shattered by brave little England. The defeat of the 
Invincible Armada was the opening chapter in the history of the United States. 
Sixteenth Century Englishmen settled a question no less vital to the human race than 
that of 1919, as to whether the American world, the world of England and of all 
freedom-loving peoples, or the German mind and purpose should shape the destinies 
of mankind. 

"We must be free or die, who speak the tongue 
That Shakespeare spake." 

The life-story of the United States is a chapter in universal history. It is part 
and parcel of the long struggle for justice, for freedom, for the equality of man 
before the law, industrially as well as politically, which has gone on since the dawn 
of Anglo-Saxon history; and the godfathers of America were Hooker and Shake- 
speare and Sandys, Hampden and Pym and Cromwell. 

"Shakespeare and the Founders of Liberty in America," was written in 1917 
when America was at a white heat in the world-shaking struggle for the preserva- 
tion of those grand ideals and principles which men of the Anglo-Saxon blood have 
for centuries accounted their dearest possession. A more eloquent and convincing 
spokesman could scarcely have been found than Charles Mills Gayley. Writing in 
1917 he says: "In this period of conflict, the sternest that the world has known, when 
we have joined heart and hand with Great Britain, it may profit Americans to recall 
how essentially at one with Englishmen we have always been in everything that 
counts. That the speech, the poetry, of the race are ours and theirs in common, 
we know — they are Shakespeare. But that the institutions, the law and the liberty, 
the democracy administered by the fittest, are derived from Shakespeare's England, 
and are Shakespeare too, we do not generally know, or if we have known, we do not 
always remember." The League of Nations and world-wide arbitration are but 
Richard Hooker's desire for "an universal fellowship with all men." 

From fifty-five to sixty-millions of our one hundred millions are exclusively or 
predominantly descended from the ancient stock which first landed on these shores 
three hundred years ago. But there is a pedigree of the mind and soul as well as of 
the body, and to all true Americans of whatever name or race, Charles Mills Gayley 
extends a welcome. "To the descendants not of the blood alone but of the spirit, of 
the heart and conscience, of the faith and stern resolve, the undying devotion to 
freedom, right, and unconquerable hope, this little book is dedicated.'' 

Charles Mills Gayley represents the very highest type of Americanism. The 
spirit of America, the great traditions and ideals of the fathers live and walk in 
him. In his mind is embodied the Heroic and Ideal America, with an unwavering 
faith in its great destiny and mission to mankind. 

Forty years ago, that benign and gracious spirit, Arthur Penryhn Stanley, wrote 
of our country: "Whether from the remarkable circumstances of its first beginnings, 
certain it is, that even from very early times a sense of a vast and mysterious des- 
tiny unfolding in a distant future, had taken possession of the mind both of Ameri- 

[38] 



cans and of Englishmen. * * *Let it not be grevlous unto you,' was the con- 
solation offered from England to the Pilgrim Fathers, 'that you have been instru- 
ments to break the ice for others. The honor shall be yours to the world's end, for 
the memory of this action shall never die.' " 

But we should also remember the warning of Dean Stanley, that these great pre- 
dictions do not necessarily carry with them their fulfillment. "Other predictions 
more sacred have failed of their full accomplishment because the nations of which 
they were spoken knew not the time of their visitation, and heard the Divine Call 
with closed ears and hardened hearts." 

This is the Day of our Visitation, and a call has come to the American people 
as clear and compelling as the call which summoned Abraham from his country 
and his father's house. If, in this crisis of our destiny, we are misled by the counsels 
of a low prudence, we shall repent once, and repent always. Never were those fine 
lines of James Russell Lowell, on the "Present Crisis," of greater import than today. 

"Was the Mayflower launched by cowards, steered by men behind their time? 

Turns those tracks towards Past or Future, 

That make Plymouth Rock sublime? 

But we make their truth our falsehood, when our tender spirits flee 

The rude gfasp of that great Impulse which drove them across the sea.*' 

The prows of the Mayflower and the Arbella, of the Sea Venture and Godspeed, 
of the Ark and the Dove, turned not backward, but forward, as they ploughed their 
way through unpathed waters to the shores of the wild New World. One hundred 
and fifty years later, the men of Connecticut, Speeding to the fray, with the same 
high confidence, carried before them banners, inscribed in golden letters — "God who 
brought over the fathers will sustain the sons." 

Let us never doubt that while America treads the paths of honor and true great- 
ness in the fulfillment of her high destiny, she will be sustained and exalted among 
the nations, for this blessed land comes not to destroy but to fulfil. Vast wealth and 
power being increased duties and responsibilities to the nation as to the individual. 
Unless directed to noble ends, we may well pray, like Edward Everett Hale, "De- 
liver us, O Lord, from our terrible prosperity. Upon no one does responsibility for 
the future rest more heavily than upon the women of America. Perhaps, like Queen 
Esther, they have been called to the kingdom for such a time as this. 

George Washington had a noble mind, a progressive mind. Were he on earth 
today, who can doubt that he would be standing shoulder to shoulder with Lloyd 
George and Woodrow Wilson and Clemenceau in their heroic efforts to safeguard 
the peace and well being of mankind? 

The Voice that called our fathers Is calling us* With high hearts not unworthy 
of their sons and daughters, let us foUow the new Ught and new truth of our day as 
faithfully as they followed the new light and new truth revealed to them in their 
day. Whithersoever it may lead uS, let us Follow the Gleam. 

"New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth. 
They must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth. 
Lo ! before us gleam her campfires, we ourselves must Pilgrims be. 
Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea, 
Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's bloodrusted key." 

October 8, 1919. 

Galpin Shakespeare Club 



[39] 



EDUCATIONAL IDEALS OF ENGLAND AND 
AMERICA— PAST AND PRESENT 



"Ignorance is the curse of God," says Shakespeare. 
"Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven." 

The events of the past five years have demonstrated to the civilized world the 
utter futility of any system of education which is not rooted and grounded in the 
ethical and spiritual values of life. A great nation, priding itself on its superior 
scholarship, has repeated the immortal lesson of John Bunyan in Pilgrim's Progress, 
that close by the gate of heaven there is a way to hell. — "If the Light in thee be 
darkness, how great is that darkness." 

The roots of early American history run back to the land of Shakespeare and 
Milton and Cromwell, and some conception of that Old World life from whence they 
sprang is necessary to a true understanding of the development of American ideals 
and institutions. Let us turn backward a thousand years to that little sea-girt land 
which nourished and sent forth in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century, the 
most remarkable body of colonists the world has ever seen; for close enfolded in 
that bud lay all the possibilities of the United States of America. 

As in the ancient world, European education had its origin in religion. In peace- 
ful monasteries, gentle, scholarly spirits kept alive the traditions of knowledge, and 
in fierce ages of war and bloodshed those quiet retreats were like the shadow of a 
great Rock in a weary land. From the Scriptoria of those monasteries came the 
illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages, and patient scholars transcribed with 
the pen copies of the classics which had survived the downfall of the Roman Em- 
pire, a precious legacj'^ to the future generations. 

When we trace England's educational and intellectual life to its fountain-head, 
we find in the foreground the simple yet august figure of the Venerable Bede, the 
first great English scholar. In the peaceful monastery of Jarrow, near the wild 
North Sea, "the quiet grandeur of a life consecrated to learning and teaching and 
writing dawned for Englishmen in the story of Baeda." A century later Alfred the 
Great, keenly alive to the things of the mind, laid the foundation of English litera- 
ture and of popular education. "He was the forerunner of a long line of eminent 
educationalists who have clearly understood that the healing of nations must begin 
invariably at the fountain-head of popular feeling and emotion." "I desire," he said 
as his life drew to a close, "I desire to leave to the men that come after me a remem- 
brance of me in good works." King Alfred and Baeda were the prototypes of all 
that is noblest in English character and English history. 

The monastic schools of Northumbria were like a light shining in the darkness 
of that rude age, and Alcuin, a famous scholar bred in the monastery of York, was 
urged by Charlemagne to come to his court as the prime minister of education in the 
nVish kingdom. In the palace school of Charlemagne Alcuin carried on the work 
of education, and trained scholars to be the torch-bearers of knowledge until time 
was ripe for the founding of universities. 

In the educational ideals of Bede and Alcuin and King Alfred heart and soul 
kept step with intellectual achievement, and their finely tempered spirits left an in- 
delible impress on the ideals of the English people. Their little candle threw its 
beams across the wild centuries which lay between them and the England that we 
know. 

In the thirteenth century, Oxford had become a centre of light and learning to 
all Christendom. The democratic tendencies of Oxford, and later of Cambridge, 
taught new lessons in human values to the sons of dukes and barons. Among Oxford 
scholars the son of the noble stood on precisely the same footing as the poorest 
scholar. Knowledge made the Master. Students were drawn to the universities by 
no other motive than a sincere love of learning for its own sake. With the Revival 

140J 



of Learning Cambridge University took the lead in liberal thought, and here were 
educated many of the founders of New England. After seven hundred years, these 
institutions of learning are the nurseries of the choice and master spirits of the Eng- 
lish nation. 

The New Learning of the sixteenth century, embodied in great scholars like Sir 
Thomas More, Erasmus, and John Colet, aroused new conceptions in the mind of 
England and led to wide reforms in the higher education of the country. The first 
steps towards a broader education system had been made in the free grammar 
schools, and in the founding of ten public schools, the first in 1382, the last in 1611. 
The keynote of English educational ideals was struck in 1382, by William of Wyke- 
ham, the founder of Winchester, the first public school. His discipline was based 
upon self-government. Its cardinal principle was to rule themselves and each other 
with wisdom and justice, and this was the great life-lesson of those schools in early 
England. The grammar schooLs of Edward the Sixth and of Elizabeth, in a word the 
system of middle-class education, by the close of the century had changed the very 
face of England. 

Neither the public schools nor the grammar schools were free and public as we 
understand the term. They were endowed schools, whose founders provided for the 
free education and sustenance of a certain number of poor but promising boys, se- 
lected by some competent person or persons. The public school students were known 
as foundation scholars, while the commoners were paid for by their parents or 
guardians. As the school became famous the boys of wealthy parents usually outnum- 
bered those for whom the institution was originally intended. The education given 
in these schools fitted the pupils for entrance to the universities. The fame of St. 
Paul's School and of Christ Hospital, of Rugby and Harrow and Eton has spread to 
the ends of the earth. Christ Hospital, far-famed as the "Blue-coat school," has 
always been democratic in its character, the boys being from different ranks in life. 
"Perhaps there is not," says Leigh Hunt, "a foundation in the country more truly 
English, taking that word to mean what Englishmen wish it to mean — something 
solid, unpretending, of good character, and free to all." 

Rugby is "peculiarly favored by the country-squire class and the smaller landed 
gentry of England. If not so costly, or so richly endowed as Eton or Harrow, its 
educational advantages are quite as great; and the Rugbeian will find himself among 
youngsters in whose veins runs some of the best and sturdiest blood in England, and 
from whose ranks will be recruited the men who are to make the history of their 
country in the not far-off future." 

The defects and limitations incident to earlier and ruder ages have been gradu- 
ally corrected, and these public schools are noble models of English instruction. The 
famous Dr. Arnold of Rugby was one of the world's great lights in education. He 
"understood the fundamental value of character, and held first and last and always 
the ideal of high character before his boys." The customs of Rugby efface all social 
distinctions, and the son of a peer may find himself fag to the son of a butcher, and 
in this humble capacity may be taught valuable lessons in obedience and democracy. 

These ten richly endowed and very ancient seminaries for boys have no counter- 
part either in our land or on the continent. "Nearly every Englishman of note, in 
war and in peace, in the Church and in the forum, at the bar and in the field of let- 
ters, began his career at some one of the great public schools. Their annals are replete 
with thrilling interest to the boys and girls of the English-speaking race everywhere. 
* * * Happy indeed the lads whose lines fall in such pleasant places as these 
hoary and venerable institutions, with their traditions and history running far back 
into the romantic past, and their ancient annals crowded with the names and deeds 
of English worthies who trod their time-worn pavements in by-gone days." 

Perhaps it was due to such schools as these that Cardinal Wolsey emerged from 
his obscure beginnings and rose to the proudest place in the kingdom of Henry the 
Eighth. Since the earliest days of English history it has always been possible for a 
man of simple origin to rise by ability and scholarship to the highest positions in 
Church and State. The younger sons of an English peer are Commoners in the law, 
and a Commoner has more than once risen to the ranks of an English peer. Believ- 
ing devoutly, as our own forefathers did, in the rule of "the Best" and wisest, 
Shakespeare, reflecting the spirit of his nation, says, "Let none presume to wear an 
undeserved dignity," knowing well that worth and dignity belong to no particular 
class, and that the humblest place is "dignified by the doer's deed." 

[41J 



No nation has ever combined more perfectly tlie life of thought with the life 
of action. Sir "Walter Raleigh and Sir Philip Sidney are shining examples of this 
two-fold training, and the great epic poet Milton struck mighty blows for human 
freedom. In every age, the fundamental idea of English education has been to pro- 
duce sterling manhood, — who lacketh manhood lacketh all. To "play the game" and 
take no base advantage, to face fortune's smiles and fortune's buffets in a fashion 
befitting a man, to uphold fair play and respect for the plighted word, is the ideal of 
the English nation. • 

"Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, 
These three alone lead life to sovereign power." 

These qualities, with an inborn love of freedom, are the immortal heritage of 
the English-speaking race in every land and under every sky. 

The ancient spirit has not fled! All the world knows how gloriously the men 
of Shakespeare's breed, from the stately homes of England and from London streets, 
gentle and simple alike, have shown the mettle of their pasture. Against odds as 
fearful as those which confronted the Light Brigade at Balaklava they have jeo- 
parded their lives unto the death, in the high places of the field, in defence of their 
homes and the freedom of mankind. 

"Let him work who can, high 
Deeds ere his death day." 

sang Beowulf in the gray dawn of Anglo-Saxon history, and the men of that race are 
still true to type. May we add that America's Soldiers of Freedom have been like 
unto them? 

Nor must we forget the important part the Bible has played in English educa- 
tion among all classes and conditions. In the words of a recent writer, it has been 
to that race like the beating of the heart, and the flowing of the blood. English 
literature is shot through and through with its sacred teachings, and the wisest and 
historians of England have accounted the Bible as in and of itself a liberal educa- 
tion. It is our legacy also, for the mentality of America's founders and forefathers 
was colored by this wonderful Hebrew Book, first read and loved by their English 
firesides. 

Unlike the United States and Germany, England has never manifested any great 
zeal for universal education, not through contempt for the intellect of the masses, but 
because she has never placed so high an estimate on purely intellectual develop- 
ment apart from being and doing. Not so much to be a fine scholar, says Thomas 
Hughes, but to be "a brave, helpful, truth-loving Englishman, and a gentleman, and 
a Christian," — that is the national ideal of education. 

Yet it is a nation of great scholars and famous men in every field of human 
endeavor, and its literature is the greatest since the days of ancient Greece. How- 
ever, in 1870, in obedience to the Spirit of the Age, England established a school 
system for popular education which has equalled, if not surpassed, the German 
school method which was adopted as a model. Great attention is paid to the physical 
development of boys and girls, a sound mind in a sound body being rightly regarded 
as one of the chiefest of earthly blessings. The universal love of out-door sports of 
all kinds has fostered habits of mind and body which enable Englishmen to play the 
man, either in life or death. 

Not the least valuable feature of English education is the universal enthusiasm 
for games and sports which has characterized Merry England from the earliest times. 
This is a common ground where the rich and the poor meet together in a most dem- 
ocratic fashion. These sports, so dear to the English heart, afford diversion to the 
mature and a most valuable training to the young, inculcating the spirit of fair play 
and a courteous obedience to the rules of the game. Much that is best and manliest 
in English character has been evolved in their cricket grounds, and in all that wide 
range of national sport from foot-ball and hockey to the Derby and Epsom races. 
Not so much to win the game, as to play it skilfully and well, with strict observance 
of the rules and of fair play, is the English idea. Carried on year after year, it 
constitutes in its way a training for after life, because as a rule the various sports 
are conducted on sounder lines of honesty and fair play than anywhere else in 
the world. To "play the game," is no mere figure of speech. It is a philosophy of 

[4f] 



life. To be a good sportsman, winning with fairness and moderation, and losing with 
manly self-control and cheerfulness, is a distinctively English ideal, and to be a good 
loser, or a good winner, is no small part of a manly character. 

It is neither the English idea nor the American idea to repress original think- 
ing or individual initiative in the humblest person. On every subject in heaven or 
earth, he is free to use the brain that God has given him, and his actions are limited 
only by the rights of his fellow-beings. Not by stunting individual expression, nor 
by unquestioning obedience to authority are the finest results in human education to 
be obtained. "Man," according to Emerson "is a noble endogenous plant which grows 
from within outward," and in the same vein John Stuart Mill, in his famous essay on 
Liberty, declares, — "Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and 
set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and 
develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which 
make it a living thing." 

It is the denial of these principles which has narrowed and stultified the intellect 
of the common people of Germany, and converted them as a body into willing tools 
and dupes for their most unscrupulous masters. Ever learning and never coming to 
a knowledge of the truth, in the crucial moments of their history they are unable to 
discern good from evil, or light from darkness. 

When we compare life in the German schools with that depicted in "Tom Brown 
at Rugby," it is easy to understand why noble men of finest scholarship like Dean 
Stanley, Thomas Hughes, and Dr. Arnold, fully abreast of the best thought of the 
world, should be the fruit of one, while men of the Hindenberg, Von Tirpitz, Mun- 
sterberg, Bernstorff, Bernhardi type should be the logical outgrowth of the other. 

No nation, or organization of any kind, sacred or secular, has existed for cen- 
turies without having dark pages in its history, which are to be profoundly regretted, 
but these do not necessarily represent the national spirit. With the nation as with 
the individual, it is not the isolated act, the one dark hour that brings remorse, which 
makes it as essentially good or evil. It is the great general trend of thought and pur- 
pose which stamps the man, or the nation, as noble or ignoble. 

Let us now study for a moment the psychology of our own country, and deter- 
mine what is the Spirit of America and her attitude towards the supreme facts of 
life. It has been well said that when the Mayflower sailed across the Atlantic it was 
at once "the fruit of the past, and the seed of the future." All that was best in the 
historic past, all the richness garnered up in Elizabethan England, was borne west- 
ward to be planted in the soil of a virgin continent, and those who carried the pre- 
cious seed were picked men. They were the Liberals and Progressives of that day. 

It was the singular good fortune of the United States to have its foundations 
laid by men who feared God, though they feared nothing else. Next to religion, the 
Pilgrim and the Puritan prized knowledge. "Get wisdom, get understanding," was 
to them one of the first and greatest commandments. "Two divine ideas filled their 
great hearts," says Horace Mann, "their duty to God and to posterity. Amid all 
their privations and dangers the fathers of New England conceived the magnificent 
idea, not only of a universal but of a free education for the whole people." 

From the beginning. Religion and Education went hand in hand. ,With all their 
enthusiasm for knowledge, these Makers of America would have rejected any system 
of education which left the heart and the soul untaught and undisciplined. The 
earliest educational ideals of America combined knowledge with character. In Light 
and Perfection lay the whole meaning of man's destiny here below. Upon Religion, 
Education, Morality, and Freedom they reared their little conunonwealth, pillars as 
enduring as the Power that created the world. No selfish and separate benefit, but 
the good of the whole, was the end they sought. On a memorial gateway of Harvard 
University is inscribed a sentence which strikes the keynote of early American edu- 
cational ideals, — "Depart to Serve Thy Country and Thy Kind." 

At a later period, from the educational ideals of Horace Mann and of Mary 
Lyon, and from the Quincy School System, light has streamed out over the whole 
nation. In every plan of early education the development of high character and an 
undying love of liberty have been the corner-stone. To some degree, the famous 
public schools of England have been represented in America by Phillips Academy 
at Andover, Massachusetts, and the Exeter School for boys. There character has 
been moulded, and young men inspired to noble service in every place and calling. 

L43] 



Nor has the latter end of the commonwealth forgotten its beginning. A desire 
for the moral and mental education of the human race animates the present-day 
America from sea to shining sea. The great world tragedy has but deepened in the 
national consciousness the sense of its duty to God and its duty to man. 

The American ideal of Culture is that of Matthew Arnold and of Emerson — "To 
make reason and the will of God prevail," and having for its outward manifestations 
increased Sweetness, increased Life, increased Light, increased Sympathy, in a word 
the broadening and humanizing of the entire man. How far removed from that sav- 
age Kultur bajsed upon Force and Fear! The one ideal raises the human spirit to the 
stars, the other tramples its hopes and aspirations in the dust. 

Two hundred and fifty years ago New England was the one spot on earth where 
every man, woman, and child could read and write, and now in this Twentieth Cen- 
tury we have cause for uneasiness in the vast illiteracy revealed by the draft search- 
light. Foreign immigration is knocking at our gates, and the problems of fitting 
these aliens for citizenship is stirring every true American heart. The Spirit of 
America must be fostered by other means than the mere study of the English 
language, and the surface adoption of American habits and customs, for he is not an 
American who is one outwardly, but he is an American who is one inwardly. The 
education of a free people must go deep, even to the very springs of life. "Civili- 
zation," says Charles Mills Gayley, "is born of personal dignity and human sym- 
pathy. Its ideals are not assumed; they are the breath of its nostrils, the vision of 
its heart; they fill the space of the soul." 

In the study of American history we might learn something from English 
methods. History rightly understood is vitally necessary to a just conception of the 
Past, the Present, and the Future. As taught in the English schools, history is made 
a living soul, and the child feels that Alfred the Great, Henry the Fifth, Hampden 
and Eliot, are really the great forefathers of his race, and this wide outlook em- 
braces all whose names have becomej illustrious in building the life of their country. 
When a boy once realizes that he is the son of a great people, it begets in him a 
pride of race and ai resolve to be worthy of it. The annals of race are its Bible, 
its sacred book, and in times of danger and difficulty it finds in every page elements 
of wisdom and encouragement. 

How thrilling the voice of Alfred the hero-king heard across the centuries, ad- 
juring his countrymen "as long as they live, to live worthily," or of Nelson, in that 
simple but immortal phrase, "England expects every man to do his duty." In these 
latter days our hearts burn within us as we recall that thin red line standing "with 
their backs to the wall, fighting for the safety of their homes, and the freedom of 
mankind." Wisely directed, a historic consciousness fosters the virtues of a great 
people. 

How seldom are American children told of the two swords in the hall of Mount 
Vernon, with Washington's injunction to his young kinsmen: Never to unsheathe 
those swords except in defense of freedom, and once unsheathed, never to sheathe 
them again until the end is accomplished. How few of our high school and college 
graduates appreciate the importance of the colonial period, the seed-bed of American 
institutions, in which germinated the ideas and principles ^^ich found utterance in 
the Declaration of Independence, and which have circled the globe. Compassed 
about with dangers and difficulties, in those far-off forgotten days our fathers spoke 
great words and did great deeds, which even now might serve for our reproof, for our 
correction, for our instruction in righteousness. 

Nor is a noble patriotism incompatible with an altruistic spirit and a generous 
appreciation of the history and achievements of other lands. When we accustom our- 
selves to regard History as a whole, then the great deeds of each nation only increase 
the sum total of Civilization, and are necessary links in the long chain of human 
progress. 

Education is the dynamo of Democracy, as well as of Autocracy, and noble 
Ideals instilled into the minds of successive generations on the high duties of citizen- 
ship, and of liberty and justice to all mankind, are America's best Sword and Shield. 
A noted French statesman once asked James Russell Lowell how long this republic 
could endure, and Lowell replied, "so long as it is true to the principles of its 
founders." 

Our economic life has been enriched by foreign immigration, but the fundamental 
principles of the America we love and honor are largely our priceless inheritance 

[441 



from men of the blood and breed of Shakespeare. "Our Monroe doctrine," writes 
Charles Mills Gayley, "is as old as Shakespeare's day; it is but the thought of Sir 
Edwin Sandys — 'Where no government shall be putte upon them save by their own 
consent,' and adapted to the conditions of a new continent. Our zeal for arbitration 
is but Richard Hooker's desire for 'an universal fellowship with all men.' " 

Nor is this true only of the past. In recent years great voices have spoken to 
us across the sea in words that are not beyond the reaches of our souls. In the fun- 
damental ideals of freedom and the dignity of man, and in all that constitutes the 
life of the spirit, the land of Shakespeare and the land of Washington are One. 

In the long future, the safety and happiness of the human family depends in 
great measure upon the cordial fellowship of English-speaking peoples. Hand joined 
in hand, co-operating loyally with all freedom-loving nations throughout the world, 
the human race will march forward to a future of yet unimagined greatness. 

The United States can no more escape its manifest destiny as a world-power 
than it can evade the laws which govern the universe. Three hundred years ago, 
in their poor cottages in the wilderness, our forefathers dimly foresaw that America 
was predestined to exercise a vast and beneficent influence upon the fortunes of 
mankind. They saw it, and were glad. 

With the same high spirit and purpose which marked the early settlement of this 
country, let us, as a nation, Go Forward. Let America, in the words of Washington, 
"raise a standard to which the wise and good and honest of all the world can repair/' 
This alone belongs to us. "The event is in the hand of God." — 

"I do not know beneath what skies 
Nor on what seas shall be thy fate, 
I only know it shall be high, 
I only know it shall be great." 

Galpin Shakespeahe Club May 14, 1919. 



l4S\ 



REPORT OF THE FEDERATION SECRETARY OF 
THE GALPIN SHAKESPEARE CLUB 



Madam President and Members of the Club: — 

The District Federation of Woman's Clubs met at Hollywood, April 7, 8, 9, 
1919. General progress all along the line was indicated by the reports of the various 
clubs in the District. In spite of strenuous war-work and hampering disadvantages 
they have been able to "Carry On." Last year Los Angeles added eighteen clubs to 
the Federation, as many as the rest of the district has furnished within that period. 

In the War Victory Fund raised by the club women of the United States for 
furlough homes in France for disabled soldiers, California raised $10,500, more 
than twice her share. Workers have been sent overseas, carrying out these truly 
benevolent plans and purposes. They are called Blue Birds from the uniform worn 
and from the cheer and comfort diffused by their unselfish devotion to our soldiers 
of freedom. 

Mrs. Burdette spoke on "Readjustment" as a living interest vital to California, 
which must be met Here and Now. She dwelt on the dislocation of labor, and the 
increased industry necessary to furnish work for the 90,000 boys who will return. 
This is all the more essential because of the reaction which is bound to follow the 
strenuous life previous to the armistice. The needs of the unemployed, if ignored, 
constitute a menace to America and the dearest interests of mankind. 

The General Council of the General Federation of Woman's Clubs is to hold a 
deliberative Council, in which the great question is to be considered of foreign il- 
literacy in the United States, a condition which is at variance with all the best tra- 
ditions and ideals of the Founders of the Republic. Clubwomen are looking forward 
to International Club work, thus uniting all the women of the world for the better- 
ment of the human race. 

Mrs. Shepard Barnum, State and National Chairman of Education, urged a spe- 
cial Federal Department dealing with the problems of modern education. More than 
any other country, America has stood for democracy, of which knowledge is the 
corner-stone. A Federal Department should be established, dealing less exclusively 
than the Bureau of Education does with the purely material side of the work, and 
more in the broad spirit of Victor Hugo who says: "Whoever opens a school, closes 
a prison." 

Purposeful Reciprocity with other clubs leads to the renewed life, the broadening 
mind. Little clubs are centres of light in their respective communities, and larger 
association with others leads them into the main currents of the world's thought and 
endeavor, and to a finer comprehension of the values of life. The high resolves born 
of solitude must be embodied in action and closer human fellowship or they fall 
short of their true end. The aim of Clubs is to be Inclusive and not Exclusive, for 
"true nobility is as catholic as the household of the saints of God," and all that we 
keep out, we go without, says Emerson. 

The Clubs of Los Angeles are urged to stand behind the movement to prevent the 
name of the Mission Road from being changed to Mission Boulevard, and to prevent 
the loss of names of other old landmarks rich in memories of early California. What- 
ever remains of that romantic past is a precious inheritance, and should be sacredly 
preserved. There is a certain vandalism in modern town and city councils which 
should be guarded against by all who prize a historic past. 

A Roosevelt Memorial was reported by Audubon Societies, a beautiful fountain 
in Washington, D. C. in honor of Theodore Roosevelt as a bird man deeply interested 
in bird life and its conservation. 

A nurse of the Civil War spoke briefly on the war nursing of that period, which 
blazed the way for the American Red Cross. Those heroic women were the first, ex- 

[46] 



eept Florence Nightingale, to devote themselvs to this noble work, which now circles 
the globe. In the aged speaker the past and the present met. 

A most interesting address was given by Miss Virginia GraefF on Civic Centers, 
in which she urged a Municipal building as a civic center in every community. She 
spoke of music as the breath of God, which unifies all peoples by a divine touch 
which makes the whole world kin. Music should take an important place in human 
education. Poetry and music and the drama were the handmaids of religion in the 
ancient world, and in our own day community music and the higher and purer forms 
of the drama may lead us backward to some of the beauties and simplicities of an 
earlier day. Public spirit, civic spirit, community spirit lead away from mere selfish 
and separate good. The principle of "each for all, and all for each," is the heritage 
of America from its Pilgrim and Puritan fathers. Thus self love is purified, and be- 
ginning with ourselves, extends beyond family and kindred, until it embraces the 
human race, and we lose ourselves in the larger whole. 

Miss Mary Foy gave an eloquent talk on the Fifth Liberty Loan which has been 
already spent to secure a speedy victory, and she also suggested that a Resolution be 
sent to Woodrow Wilson endorsing his efforts to create a League of Nations to safe- 
guard the peace of the world. In our great President the oppressed peoples of the 
world have found a champion, and those who have sat in darkness for centuries have 
seen a great light. 

Far-reaching work in Industrial affairs and Social Service is being carried on 
by women. "Social Service, what is it?" some one asks. Resolved into a nutshell, it 
is a recognition of the truth of Emerson's lines, that 

'T[n the very scum of things 

There's something, something always sings,'* 

and true social service reaches a helping hand down to the most benighted soul. It 
is not enough to give alms. We must give ourselves. It is the old story of Sir Launfal 
and the leper, and in modern efforts to better human conditions we catch the echo 
of words spoken centuries ago: "He that is greatest among you, let him serve." 
Splendid service is being rendered by the Catholic and Jewish Woman's Clubs, as 
well as by Protestant organizations. In this great work the spirit of human brother- 
hood transcends every barrier of race and creed, and is carrying light and hope and 
healing into the dark places of the earth. 

A plea was made for Political Science, and the need of intelligent study of the 
science of government. It is the calamity of America that it is so largely ruled by 
politicians, whose ends are not their country's nor God's, nor truth's. A good gov- 
ernment can only be secured by a great people determined to attain noble ends by 
noble means. Nothing blinds the eyes and perverts the judgment more than a nar- 
row, partisan spirit. More than a hundred years ago, William EUery Channing wrote: 
"You may look to any man for fairness of mind and sensibility to truth rather than 
to a confirmed partisan. Party spirit has as fatal effects on the heart as on the 
understanding. Look anywhere for candor and generosity rather than to the breast 
of a partisan." The most signal benefit that American womanhood can render to 
their country and their kind is to bring into public life an eye single to Truth and 
Righteousness irrespective of party. It is said of James Russell Lowell and of the 
late Charles Francis Adams that they preserved entire political independence, voting 
for what seemed most for the public good without regard to party affiliations. "Edu- 
cated, enlightened, democratic women," says David Graham Phillips, "are of the 
highest importance to America, whose mission seems to be to lead the world in the 
march upward where every human unit shall have the chance to count as one." 

Three very able addresses were given by clergymen of widely differing religious 
faith, yet one in their zeal for truth and justice. Dr. Francis had for his topic "The 
New Humanity" and described this as a truly wonderful age. None but a prophet 
could have foretold the marvelous events of the past five years, which have been a 
turning point in the history of the world. It has been the flesh warring against the 
spirit, the war of the jungle and the war of great spiritual and ethical principles and 
of human brotherhood, the culmination of long ages of struggle between the 
sabre-toothed tiger and the highest forms of life upon this planet. It is the dawn of 
a new day, and humanity is coming into its own. The death knell of autocracy has 
been sounded, and a new era is coming in international relations, and a new com- 

[47] 



prehension of God's word: — "Of one blood made He all the nations of the earth." 
Yet the aftermath of war is almost as terrible as war itself, and must be overcome 
in the same high spirit. Bolshevism is the other extreme of tyranny and autocracy. 
Famine stalks the earth, and the disinherited and the ignorant are endeavoring to tear 
down with both hands the civilization and law and order it has taken centuries to 
build up. The new humanity is based upon the solidarity of the human race. In 
blood and tears the world has been taught that we must all "rise or sink together, 
dwarfed or godlike, bond or free." The World is One, and even from far-off Korea 
comes the cry for some system of government which will uphold the "dignity of Tife,'* 
until now trampled under the heel of the oppressor. 

Religious bigotry and intolerance have been melted in the fierce fires of war. 
Catholic and Protestant have ministered to each other's needs in hours of death and 
danger, and a Jewish Rabbi made out of sticks and thread a Cross to hold to the 
lips of a dying Catholic soldier. Never before has God been so near to man — "the 
God of the whole earth shall He be called." Woman has assumed her rightful place 
in the councils of the world, and her soul is pledged to the interests of posterity. 

The League of Nationss, says Dr. Francis, is the greatest thought in the mind of 
man since the morning stars sang together, and constructive, not destructive, criti- 
cism is needed at this critical moment in the fortunes of mankind. Had a league of 
Nations, with teeth, existed in July, 1914, this war would have been averted. With 
the peacefulness of the dove must be combined the strength of an armed man to 
hold in check the predatory instincts of greedy and covetous nations who neither fear 
God nor regard man. The visit of Woodrow Wilson to Europe is one of the great 
events of history, and from it will date the history of the future. 

The next address was on "Americanization" by a Jewish Rabbi and made us 
deeply sensible that the Spirit of America must be fostered by other means than the 
mere study of the English language and a superficial adoption of American habits 
and customs. 

Like all of our speakers. Rabbi Mangin regarded our honored President as hav- 
ing the greatest vision of any man of this century, and his effort is to usher in the 
true Messianic age. It was also the hope of Washington that the day might come 
when all the nations would be united, though in his time it was still afar off. 

The third speaker, Dr. Stanton Hodgin, made a most interesting comparison be- 
tween the League of the Holy Alliance at Vienna a century ago, and that now cre- 
ated at Paris. He compared Metternich, Talleyrand and Alexander of Russia with 
their despotic ideas of the divine right of kings, with the liberal and enlightened 
statesmanship of Lloyd George, Woodrow Wilson, and Clemenceau, who literally 
breathed the breath of life into the modern French Republic. Better go down to 
defeat with these men of God than to success with narrow, reactionary minds, who 
would defeat the hopes of humanity, and permit countless millions of young lives 
to have been sacrificed in vain. The great leaders of the Paris Peace League are the 
highest exponents of Democracy in the world today, and the bulwarks of freedom. 
President Wilson answered a world call to Paris, as clear and unmistakable as the 
call which came to Moses and to Abraham. No other man of this generation could 
have interpreted our national soul to itself, or the world's best self to itself, as the 
great leader and spokesman of the American people has done. 

We are accustomed to think of the Monroe Doctrine as a purely American Pro- 
duct. When the Holy Alliance encouraged Spain to seize its old time Spanish colonies 
on the American continent, England refused to be a party to their aims, and fhe 
Monroe Doctrine was the joint reply of our own John Quincy Adams and of Can- 
ning, the great English statesman to all such claims on the part of foreign 
powers. The speaker concluded by saying that if the League of Nations should be 
defeated it will be the most colossal crime of the ages. H. G. Wells has truly said 
that a nation is made up of many strands. There is a base and dull America, and 
there is a Heroic and Ideal America. With an eye single to the true greatness and 
glory of our country, and to the fulfillment of its high destiny, let us as clubwomen 
ally ourselves once for all to a heroic and ideal America, the America of the Pil- 
grim, the Cavalier, and the Quaker, the land of Washington and of Lincoln: — this 
blessed land whose highest privilege is to ser^'e mankind, — and which comes not to de- 
stroy but to fulfil. 

[48] 



"That word still echoes round the world, 
And all wfio hear it turn to thee: 
And read upon thy flag unfurled 
The prophecies of destiny. 

"Thy great world lesson all shall learn, 
The nations in thy schools shall sit. 
Earth's farthest mountain tops shall burn 
With watch-fires from thy own upUt. 

"With peace that comes of purity 
And strength to simple justice due. 
So runs our loyal dream of thee; 
God of our fathers ! make it true." 

The Eighteenth Annual Convention of the District Federation closed with the 
installation of officers, having been the most interesting and harmonious convention 
ever held in the District of Los Angeles. 

Respectfully submitted, 

LlLLIASr HOAG MOKK. 

The Galpin Shakespeare Club, June 14, 1919. 



L49] 



EVER-GROWING LIVES 



Since time began, woman by her nature and constitution has ever been a seeker 
arid worshiper of the beautiful. 

Sometimes, like the worship of Venus, which Plato speaks of, it has led her on 
trivial and unworthy errands, to purely physical and material ends. Yet, in all ages, 
there have been chosen spirits here and there, who have climbed to higher levels, 
realizing unconsciously, the thought expressed by our own Emerson, when he said: 
"All high beauty has a moral element in it, and character and intellect alone can give 
splendor to youth and awe to wrinkled skin and gray hairs." 

Almost three centuries ago, in the brilliant yet corrupt and frivolous court of 
Louis the Fourteenth, Madame de S'evigne discovered for herself the secret of Eternal 
Youth. With the years fleeting by she determined to repair the ravages of time with 
the graces and perfections of the mind. She meditated long on this subject and re- 
solved to work every day on her mind, her soul, her heart, and her sentiments. 

So cultivated and enriched, the human intellect and character win added charms 
from years and experience; even as the glass found in old Assyrian monuments has 
been invested with a thousand delicate tints and beauties by the wonder-working 
hand of Time. 

These and similar fine aspirations and ideals have wrought wondrous results in 
our own day. So strong has the impulse become that the Twentieth Century deserves 
to be called the Renaissance of Womanhood. 

Dedicated to high aims, earnest seekers after the invisible truth and beauty 
and goodness, the women of the Browning Club have learned what power and wis- 
dom reside in ever-growing lives, the one type of beauty and excellence which age 
cannot wither, nor custom stale. 

To the Los Angeles Browning Club, I therefore offer this sentiment: 

May they be dwellers in the House Beautiful, in the Chamber of Peace, with 
their windows forever open to the sunrising. 

Robert Browning Banquet, May 7, 1913. 



[501 



CLUBS AND CLUB WORK 

By Mrs. Lillian Monk^ B. L., 
First President of the Woman^s Club^ Nevada, Iowa, 1894. 



Almost fifty years have rolled away since Margaret Fuller uttered her eloquent 
appeal in behalf of women in the nineteenth century, and urgd in winged words 
that, irrespective of sex, the first object in life is to grow. Since that time there 
has been established a network of clubs stretching from the Atlantic to the Pa- 
cific, and having for their aim the advancement of woman. Nor is this movement 
confined to America. Like the tidal wave, it has swept around the globe, and a 
Sorosis Club is teaching even far-off India that "the world was made for women 
also." 

These organizations are among the most significant features of modern times, 
and have done perhaps more than any other agency to lift women out of the at- 
mosphere of petty, sordid details, and to give them an outlook into that large other 
world which lies beyond their own immediate horizon. In their choice of work the 
different clubs show marked individuality. Conversational Clubs train their mem- 
bers in what may be considered almost the finest of the fine arts. In Tourist Clubs 
hundreds of women, confined by circumstances to one spot, have circumnavigated 
the globe in their fireside travels, and come back to their native land laden with 
pleasant and precious riches. Others are devoted to the study of Shakspeare, and 
realize for themselves how the hearts of the old Elizabethans must have burned 
within them as this great discerner of human thoughts and motives unrolled his 
magic canvas before their eyes. Still others attempt to scale the steep and thorny 
heights of Robert Browning's poetry. The Woman's Club with which I am iden- 
tified prefers a varied program. It has considered the Origin of Nations and the 
condition of Ireland. It has followed the fortunes of Arctic explorers in the frozen 
North, and of Mexico and Africa in the sunny South. It has sympathized with 
the pure and elevated teachings of Buddha, and with the lofty faith of the Jew. 
Nor has it forgotten to pay due tribute to Art and Music and Poetry, to the Work 
and Advancement of Woman, to Capital and Labor, as well as to the Great Ex- 
position which has drawn so many strangers within our gates. But whatever the 
outward diversity, in divers communities, these quiet, unpretentious Women's Clubs 
are becoming centers from which wholesome and elevating influences flow out in 
every direction. Their multiplication and extension will do much to lessen the truth 
of Philip Gilbert Hammerton's statement that the majority of women are not su- 
perior, either in knowledge or discipline of the mind, at the age of 50 to what they 
were at the age of 25. 

Out in the world, wrestling with the problems of business, social and political 
life, our sons, brothers and husbands have ample opportunity for mental growth 
and expansion. To the end that we be not left behind in the onward march, or be- 
come, as age creeps on, like barnacles which incrust the hull of a ship and impede 
its progress, we urge the maintenance of Woman's Clubs. "They are landmarks 
in the progress of our best civilization, as well as resting places for the climber." 



[511 



IN MEMORIAM 



Mrs. Kate Tuyper Galpin — 1856-1905 



(A Friend's Tribute to a Noble Woman) 



(Mrs. Lillian Monk, now at Los Angeles, who was an associate of the late Mrs. 
Kate Tupper Galpin when the latter as Miss Tupper was a teacher in the Nevada 
High School, sends the following personal tribute to the memory of the gifted and 
much lamented woman:) 

Some of your readers must still cherish pleasant recollections of this kindly, 
talented woman. An enthusiastic student of Shakespeare from early youth, her 
first Shakespeare class was organized in Nevada, Iowa, of which I had the good 
fortune to be a member; and the interest then awakened in those wonderful dramas 
has continued with me from that day to this. In later years Mrs. Galpin conducted 
her classes with all her old freshness and enthusiasm. Last summer she spent 
some time at Stratford-on-Avon, visiting the home and haunts of Shakespeare. 

Yesterday I attended her funeral at Cumnock Hall. In accordance with her 
wish, the casket stood in the Shakespeare room where her classes had met, and 
which will be like a shrine always in the memory of every student of the Galpin 
Shakespeare Club. The brief address by her pastor was very beautiful and touch- 
ing, and did justice to her patient and gentle, yet heroic, life. Hers was an earnest, 
faithful life, intent on high thoughts and themes, and beneficent to others, con- 
stantly inspiring them to care less for the frivolous and the temporal and more for 
the things that are eternal. A bright woman said to me yesterday that there was 
not another woman in Los Angeles who would be so widely missed. 

Her kindly spirit and generous appreciation of others endeared her to all with 
whom she had to do. Perhaps one secret of that winning charm lay in the absence 
of all unkindly criticism. "Do not criticize," she was wont to say. To awaken the 
latent gifts and graces of mind and character in those about her was her beautiful 
mission to her kind. She was large-souled, and the nobleness of her mind seldom 
failed failed to evoke a response from those about her. 

Her's was an earnest, work-a-day life, filled to overflowing with public duties and 
household cares and responsibilities. The children she reared to lives of honor and 
usefulness have risen up to call her blessed. Whatever Kate Tupper Galpin had, 
she won by her own fine mind and intrinsic worth. In her own quiet womanly way 
she has fought a good fight, she has finished her course, she has kept the faith. It 
seems a pity this bright, aspiring and inspiring life should be so soon ended; but 
her work on earth is done, and well done, and her memory still lives on in many 
minds and hearts made better by her presence. 

"In the vast cathedral leave her, 
God accept her, Christ receive her." 



I52l 



MRS. ADDIE M. GRIGG— AN APPRECIATION 



Since the death of Mrs. Kate Tupper Galpin, the honored founder of the Galpin 
Shakespeare Club, nothing has moved the hearts of its members so deeply as the 
untimely passing of the beloved Mrs. Grigg. She was the soul of Cumnock Hall, 
and in every life that touched her's an inspiring and uplifting influence. Like Mrs. 
Galpin, hers was an earnest, faithful life full of high thoughts and purposes, and 
awakening in others a keen appreciation for the things of the mind and the things 
of the soul. Never was there a woman who realized better the poet Wordsworth's 
thought of — 

"A perfect woman, nobly planned. 
To warn, to comfort, to command; 
And yet a spirit still, and bright 
With something of an angel light." 

Her finely touched spirit and intense spirituality led her as naturally to the 
best and highest as the flower turns to the sun. 

Her early death is a loss beyond all estimate to her family, to the Galpin 
Shakespeare Club, to Cumnock School, and to hundreds of young women who would 
have been stimulated to a nobler womanhood by her example and influence, had her 
life been spared to the allotted time of man. 

But we have lost her! The kind, gentle spirit has fled. Nothing can assuage the 
regret of those who have known and loved her, except the belief that — 

"There is no death! The stars go down 
To rise upon some fairer shore." 

And that somewhere beyond our ken that beautiful, beneficent spirit, with all its 
abounding cheerfulness and energy, still lives on, devoted to pure and noble ends. 
"Wherever there is knowledge, wherever there is virtue, wherever there is beauty, 
she will find a home." 



t53l 



A LATTER-DAY PILGRIM 



For a number of years it was my privilege to be associated in club work with a 
most interesting woman, Mrs. Lydia Bradford Torrey, the oldest member of the 
Ebell Club of Los Angeles, and of the Galpin Shakespeare Club, both of these organi- 
zations holding an important place in the intellectual life of this city. 

Abreast of the best thought of our time, Mrs. Torrey was a link connecting the 
present with the finest association of the past. In Pilgrim Hall at Plymouth is a 
picture of the marriage of Francis Le Baron and Mary Wilder, and on Burial Hill 
one finds memorial stones of the Le Baron race. Mrs. Torrey was a lineal descendent 
of "The Nameless Nobleman," Dr. Francis Le Baron, and of his son Dr. Lazarus 
Le Baron of Plymouth. In that delightful story of the olden time, "Dr. Le Baron 
and His Daughters," the author, Jane G. Austin, introduces us to fair Mary Le 
Baron and young Willam Bradford, at a picnic held on Plymouth Beach in 1745. 
From the union of these two persons sprang Mrs. Torrey, uniting in herself the fine 
French strain of the Le Barons with the old Pilgrim blood. 

Mrs. Torrey was a living example of the saying that "Blood will tell." She was 
a remarkable woman. In her younger years she had enjoyed opportunities for for- 
eign travel, and at one time she presided over the household of her cousin, Governor 
Bradford Prince of New Mexico, during his term of office. One her knew her at that 
period of her life describes her as a woman of unusual character and ability. 

At eighty, when my own acquaintance with her began, she impressed me as being 
one of the brightest and most interesting old persons I had ever met. She attended 
the Galpin Shakespeare Club quite regularly, and often took part in its programme. 
So fresh and charming were her remarks, and so fine and keen her appreciation and 
understanding of the great dramatist that it was impossible to think of her as an 
octogenarian. 

"Spring still made spring in the mind, 
When eighty years were told." 

Old and childless, she kept her heart young and her intellect bright by her un- 
failing interests in great thoughts and themes. Inheriting the fine instincts of her 
forefathers, Mrs. Lydia Bradford Torrey was a credit to her name and race. 

Revered by all who knew her she passed away at the age of eighty-eight, in Los 
Angeles, California, 1918, leaving a place which can never be filled. In the Ebell 
Rest Cottage, established for poor women convalescing from illness, a room has been 
fitted up with the assistance of the Galpin Shakespeare Club, to be known as the 
Torrey Memorial Room, a fitting symbol of the gracious, kindly spirit of this rare 
woman, who embodied in her life and thought the best traditions of Old Plymouth 
of the Pilgrims. Being dead she yet speaketh. 



t543 












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